Emmy nominee Tim Daly and Tony winner Daphne Rubin-Vega star in new production of The Night of the Iguana (photo by Joan Marcus)
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday-Sunday through February 25, $81-$161 iguanaplaynyc.com
On “Night of the Iguana,” from her last album, 2007’s Shine, Joni Mitchell sings, “The tour bus came yesterday / The driver’s a mess today / It’s a dump of a destiny / But it’s got a view . . . / Now the kid in the see-through blouse / Is moving in hard on his holy vows . . . / Since the preacher’s not dead / Dead drunk will have to do!”
Tennessee Williams’s 1961 play, The Night of the Iguana, has always attracted star power. It began as a 1948 short story, then developed from a one-act to a two-act to a 1961 three-act Tony-nominated play starring Patrick O’Neal, Bette Davis, and Margaret Leighton, followed by a 1964 John Huston film with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr.
The play is now back in a messy revival at the Signature Center from La Femme Productions that makes it clear why the show has not previously been performed in New York City this century: It’s not very good.
Directed by Emily Mann, the show centers on Rev. Shannon (Tim Daly), a defrocked priest who is now an alcoholic tour guide exhausted with life. It’s the summer of 1940, and he brings his busload of Texas Baptist female schoolteachers to the ramshackle Costa Verde Hotel in Acapulco, run by recent widow Maxine Faulk (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who is more than ready to get back in the action. The leader of the teachers, Judith Fellowes (Lea DeLaria), is angry at the shoddy tour while also trying to keep the teenage Charlotte (Carmen Berkeley) away from Shannon. Also at the hotel are aging poet Jonathan Coffin (Austin Pendleton) and his granddaughter, Hannah (Jean Lichty), who is caring for him; Pedro (Bradley James Tejeda) and Pancho (Dan Teixeira), who work for Maxine; and Frau Fahrenkopf (Alena Acker) and Herr Fahrenkopf (Michael Leigh Cook), a pair of Nazis traipsing around the place. Shannon has the bus keys, so Hank, the bus driver (Eliud Garcia Kauffman), can’t take off without the guide, who might be replaced by his colleague Jake (Keith Randolph Smith).
The Night of the Iguana takes place at a ramshackle Acapulco hotel (photo by Joan Marcus)
It’s a hot and sweaty day, but the play is cold and distant. The actors feel like they’re in different shows, never forming a solid whole. Beowulf Boritt’s invitingly decrepit set is wasted.
The Night of the Iguana came at the end of Williams’s most fertile period, the fifteen years in which he wrote The Glass Menagerie,A Streetcar Named Desire,Summer and Smoke,The Rose Tattoo,Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,Orpheus Descending,Suddenly Last Summer, and Sweet Bird of Youth. It was part of a downward spiral of poorly reviewed and attended shows that still attracted big stars but often had to cut their runs short. The Night of the Iguana is one of those Williams plays that everyone has heard of but does not live up to the hype.
Mitchell’s lines capture it best: “The night is so fragrant / These women so flagrant / They could make him a vagrant / With the flick of a shawl. / The devil’s in sweet sixteen / The widow’s good looking but she gets mean / He’s burning like Augustine / With no help from God at all.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
David Greenspan portrays four roles in one-man On Set with Theda Bara (photo by Emilio Madrid)
ON SET WITH THEDA BARA
The Brick
579 Metropolitan Ave.
Monday – Saturday through March 16, $25-$89 transportgroup.org
Bushwick-based playwright Joey Merlo became obsessed with Theda Bara after his sisters searched online for his celebrity doppelgänger and it turned out to be the silent film star known as the Vamp. His infatuation led to the one-person genderqueer show On Set with Theda Bara, running at the Brick through March 9. (The play, which Merlo wrote while he was bedridden during his last semester at Brooklyn College, premiered at the 2023 Exponential Festival; Transport Group and Lucille Lortel Theatre have teamed up to present this encore run.)
Bara, whose name is an anagram for “Arab death,” was born Theodosia Burr Goodman in 1885 and died in 1955 at the age of sixty-nine. But in Merlo’s sixty-five-minute play, she is alive and well at 139, living in an upstate mansion. Six-time Obie winner David Greenspan portrays all four characters: Detective Finale; his adopted daughter, Iras; Ulysses, a Tennessee Williams–esque southerner who started playing the organ at screenings of Bara’s films when he was twelve; and the Vamp herself.
Frank J. Oliva’s set features a long, narrow table covered in black cloth, where thirty audience members sit, advised to not place any items on it, including their hands and elbows. At either end is one empty chair where Greenspan occasionally sits, behind each of which is a shadowy mirror. Twenty other patrons are on stools against the brick walls on opposite sides of the table; above the table is a row of low-hanging lamps, and there are two additional creepy lights on the walls. Greenspan wears old-fashioned slacks, a white shirt, and a red vest, vaguely resembling a carnival barker. (The lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with costume by Avery Reed and ominous sound by Brandon Bulls.) It all makes for a kind of eerie noir séance.
The muddled plot is difficult to parse out, so don’t try too hard. The sixteen-year-old Iras is missing, and Finale is determined to find her. She uses the pronouns they/them, which confuses Finale, who is also having a hard time with his husband, Richie. “The evening of February twenty-ninth I knew something was wrong because all I heard was silence,” he says about coming home from work and not hearing Iras “doing her Tick Tocks or giggling with her girlfriends.” His reference to silence being a problem evokes Bara’s career; she appeared in more than forty silent films between 1914 and 1926, but most were destroyed in a 1937 fire, and she never made a sound picture.
Duality is central to On Set with Theda Bara at the Brick (photo by Emilio Madrid)
Ulysses, who was sexually abused as a child, moves in with Theda, a campy vampire queen and modern-day Norma Desmond who enjoys watching videos of herself on YouTube and reading the comments section. “I know I’m a little twisted. I’m a very self-aware person. But sometimes I like to see myself,” she says. “These little clips from my lost films. All that exist of my former self. I look daring and surreal. Who doesn’t like to remember. . . .”
Greenspan, telling stories like Dracula, is mesmerizing in this tour de force, bending and curving his face and his fingers as he switches between roles, each with its own different vocal twang. Director Jack Serio, who has recently helmed intimate versions of Uncle Vanya and The Animal Kingdom for a limited audience, makes full use of the space; Greenspan (Four Saints in Three Acts,Strange Interlude) stops in front of the mirrors, hides against the wall, and glides across the table with a graceful majesty. However, none of that helps distill the raggedy plot.
The play is an enigma, as was Bara herself. “My life is one big lie,” she says in the play. “But so are the movies. . . . The truth is so subjective anyway. What’s wrong with a little lie!” One of cinema’s first sex symbols, she was married to one of her directors for more than thirty years, but they never had children. She was born in Cincinnati but her studio promoted her as being from exotic Egypt, the daughter of an artist and an Arabian princess.
Even her gender identity is debated in the show. “People used to think I looked like a man. I hated those sneering comments. At first. But then I came to enjoy the criticism,” she admits. “Yes, I look like a man! Because men have power! Maybe I am a man! Maybe I’m not. You’re mine now you’re mine. Kiss me, you fool! or was it Kiss me, my fool? I can never remember the line.”
The famous line comes from her 1915 psychological drama A Fool There Was, which can be watched in full on YouTube. It’s a splendid follow-up to On Set with Theda Bara.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Patrick (Anthony Edwards) watches his family in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic on Broadway (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $94-$318 www.manhattantheatreclub.com
Success off Broadway is no guarantee of a hit on Broadway. Transferring to a bigger house, the passing of time, tweaking the script, cast changes, and sociopolitical events can all have an impact on a play or musical moving to the Great White Way.
Molly (Molly Ranson) and Elodie (Francis Benhamou) argue about Israel in Prayer for the French Republic (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
I loved Prayer for the French Republic when it debuted at MTC at New York City Center, but two years later, it doesn’t feel as sharp and incisive at the Samuel J. Friedman, and I’ve been scratching my head to try to figure out why. Joshua Harmon’s play is still an impressive piece of work, but it doesn’t have the same power now that it had then. It was named Outstanding Play at the 2022 Drama Desk Awards, receiving my vote, but I wouldn’t have voted for this current version.
The story takes place in Paris in 1944–46 and 2016–17, following the trials and tribulations of the Salomon family, who have been making pianos since 1855. During WWII, Irma and Adolphe choose to remain in France as they worry about the fate of their children. In contemporary times, their descendants face a vicious antisemitism that forces them to question whether they have to leave their home. The script and the creative team are essentially the same, including the director, David Cromer, who guided The Band’s Visit to a slew of awards both on and off Broadway. Only five of the eleven cast members are back, so that could be part of the issue. One is notably stronger than his predecessor, but another sadly falters in a key role.
However, the scintillating scene between Elodie and her distant cousin Molly as they argue about Israel is played by the same actors on the same set, yet it fails to ignite as it previously did. I think it was more than just moving to a bigger venue; the events of October 7 and the aftermath involving Hamas’s terrorist attack and Israel’s military response have impacted everyone’s views of the Middle East. The glue that held the off-Broadway show together was Rich Topol as Patrick, the Salomon brother who also serves as narrator and who has a different view of Judaism than the rest of his family. Notably, Topol just finished a run as a Jew who leaves Poland shortly before a brutal 1941 pogrom in Igor Golyak’s poignant and inventive adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class, which is filled with a frightening sense of urgency.
Two previous Harmon shows — Significant Other and Bad Jews — were just as good, if not better, when they transferred to bigger venues; Prayer is a conundrum.
Three siblings battle over their family’s legacy in Appropriate (photo by Joan Marcus)
APPROPRIATE
Helen Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $209-$269
Moving to the Belasco Theatre March 25 – June 30, $79-$318 2st.com
Ten years ago, I saw Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate at the Signature. The play is about three siblings of the white Lafayette family who have returned to the clan’s dilapidated southern plantation to sell it to pay off debts following the death of their father. The siblings are not very close — youngest brother Franz has not been heard from in a decade — but their relationships are further strained when a home-made book of photographs of lynched black men is found in the house. The possibility that their father was a racist infuriates Toni, who cared for the ailing patriarch, and she becomes even more incensed when her Jewish sister-in-law, Rachael, who is married to Bo, claims that he was antisemitic as well.
The Signature show was directed by Liesl Tommy and starred Johanna Day, Michael Laurence, and Maddie Corman as the siblings. In 2014, I wrote, “Appropriate begins with solid character development while raising intriguing social and moral issues without getting didactic. But the story goes off the rails in the second act as various secrets emerge and the vitriol reaches even higher levels. Perhaps most unfortunate, there’s a moment that seems like the perfect ending; the lights go out, and just as the audience is ready to applaud, the play continues through a disappointing, unnecessary coda. Jacobs-Jenkins clutters what is a fascinating premise with too many disparate elements.”
I still feel the same about the ending, even with an insightful added finale, but everything else about the play, at the Helen Hayes through March 3 before moving to the Belasco for three more months, is better this time around. Jacobs-Jenkins (The Comeuppance,An Octoroon), a relentless reviser, has improved the script immensely, with dialogue that hits harder and deeper. Director Lila Neugebauer grabs hold of the complex plot and never lets go; the confrontations among the siblings, their significant others, and the next generation are scintillating; at times it’s so severe and merciless, so intimate, that you feel guilty for watching it unfold but you can’t look away for a second.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate is reborn on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)
Sarah Paulson is a force of nature as Toni, an embittered woman with deep scars and no filter, exploding with vitriolic accusations she will never be able to take back. Corey Stoll goes toe-to-toe with her as Bo, who is having financial difficulties that may be affecting his ethics, while Natalie Gold is tough as nails as Rachael, who is not afraid to get in the ring with them. Michael Esper imbues Franz with a gentleness that belies the character’s past, while his younger girlfriend, a flower child named River played sweetly by Elle Fanning, stands firmly by his side. And the set, by dots, becomes more of an integral element, both what’s inside and lurking outside.
The Broadway production of Appropriate, the title of which has several different meanings and pronunciations, feels both of its time and timeless, an intense tale about the Black experience in America that has no people of color in its cast. A lot has changed in the world since 2014: Barack Obama finished his second term, followed by Donald Trump, both having defeated Hillary Clinton, the former in the primary, the latter in the general. The police killing of George Floyd led to the Black Lives Matter protests and a reckoning with this country’s shameful legacy of slavery and racism. And antisemitism is again on the rise, with October 7 only making it worse.
This vital new adaptation of Appropriate captures all of that and more in unforgettable ways.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Justin Gauthier serves as the narrator while playing numerous other roles in Between Two Knees (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
BETWEEN TWO KNEES
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 24, $29-$79 pacnyc.org www.1491s.com
White people receive quite a spanking in the New York premiere of the 1491s’ irreverent, hilarious, and scattershot theatrical history lesson, Between Two Knees.
The 1491s are a Native American sketch comedy troupe from Minnesota and Oklahoma whose members have been involved in such television series as Rutherford Falls and Reservation Dogs. In Between Two Knees, they lead the audience on a wild ride from the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890, to the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) occupation of Wounded Knee beginning on February 27, 1973. The narrative traces several generations of an Indian family as they try to find their place in a country that only knows how to take from them, treating them with disrespect and violence every step of the way.
As the crowd enters the theater at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), themed music plays, including such songs as Cher’s “Half-Breed.” Regina García’s set features a thrust stage and a backdrop with cardboard cutouts of former Cleveland Indians logo and mascot Chief Wahoo (the team was recently renamed the Guardians), the Chicago Blackhawks’ logo of an Indian head (inspired by the real-life Black Hawk of Illinois’s Sac and Fox Nation), and the Land o’ Lakes woman with a target on her stomach. A red curtain opens and closes as scenes change like vaudeville acts. Props range from a covered wagon, US army and FBI rifles and guns, and a tiny western house to a small kitchen, a hippie pedestal, and Custer’s Last Stand Bar. Lux Haac’s costumes are often tongue-in-cheek versions of traditional Native clothing.
The fun kicks off with the opening announcement telling everyone to turn off their phones, followed by a riff on the standard land acknowledgment. Introducing the play, the emcee, Larry (Justin Gauthier), provides a content warning: “Good evening, fellow Indians, and other. Take a deep breath. Ahhh, you smell that? It smells like inherited wealth, privilege, and a tad bit of guilt in this room. White people! It’s good to see you here, aho! Bet you haven’t heard that in a while. Thank you for coming to this Native American Indian show. I just want you to know, you’re about to see some heavy stuff. I mean, let’s be honest here, we’re talking about INDIANS. And Indians have been through some pretty dark shit. I mean, DARK shit. All caused by you people. Yup. You all tried your best to wipe us out and clean us off the map. I mean, can you imagine how hard it was to cast this play? We had to use a Chinese guy to play one of the Indians.”
The actor steps forward and explains, “Actually, Korean. But whatever,” a revealing joke about personal identity.
Members of the 1491s pose as a museum diorama in New York premiere at PAC NYC (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
Larry continues, “We’re gonna make this fun. We’re gonna talk about war and genocide and PTSD and molestation. So it’s ok to laugh. You are going to feel some guilt watching this. But don’t worry. That’s just what it feels like to be confronted with the source of your social power. That’s why we are passing a donation bin around the audience tonight. For just the price of a cup of coffee, you . . . can help a grown Indian child in need. Yup, yup. Just pass the can along. Don’t be cheap now. I promise, when you leave, you will still own everything. And Indians, if you’re in the audience and you got those free tickets, I better hear some quarters dropping into that can. C’mon, don’t be a stereotype. Everybody already thinks we get free college.”
The first skit involves spinning the Wheel of Indian Massacre, which first stops on the Pound Ridge Massacre, then the Raritan Massacre, and finally Wounded Knee, which gets the main plot underway. But Larry promises, “THIS is not a story about death. This is a story about life.”
Over the course of a far-too-long two hours and forty-five minutes (including intermission), Pale Face and Witko try to protect Ina from a white soldier; an Indian baby is sent to a Christian reeducation boarding school and renamed Isaiah, where he meets the feisty Irma, who refuses to give in to the evil priest and strange nuns; Indians are sent off to fight in WWII and Vietnam; and AIM returns to Wounded Knee, proclaiming, “Time to unite and defend the people!” Through it all, a pair of tiny baby moccasins ties everything together, passing along trauma and hope to the next generations.
Eight ensemble members — Gauthier, Rachel Crowl, Derek Garza, Shyla Lefner, Wotko Long, James Ryen, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Sheila Tousey — portray more than seventy characters, from Jesus, Satan, Ghost of Lakota Woman, and Singing Deer to a sexy temptress, a man with an eagle in his pants, Vanna White, and the Vietnam War as Interpretive Dance. Along the way we learn about and are reminded of various anti-Indian laws, manifest destiny, spirit animals, cultural appropriation, Native American rituals, colonization, and “the atrocities of the United SNAKES of Amerika.”
Much of the show is clever and heartfelt, its sociopolitical points emerging sharply from all the joking around, performed by likable actors who make connections with the audience, which, at the matinee I attended, was filled with more Native Americans than I had ever seen in a theater before. The Indians and the non-Indians didn’t always respond the same way to certain lines and bits; the 1491s are expert at making white people laugh at themselves amid the guilt and privilege but are careful not to cause too much discomfort.
However, some scenes are others are over-the-top farce that lose their power with random silliness. Obie-winning director Eric Ting (The Far Country,The World of Extreme Happiness) lets too many scenes run on, with a bevy of stray parts. The DIY feel extends to Elizabeth Harper’s playful lighting, Ty Defoe’s humorous choreography, and Shawn Duan’s projections, but the self-deprecating emphasis on the company’s supposed lack of technical expertise peters out. The five musical numbers, including “Touchy Touchy Tickle Touchy,” “The Song of Eddie Wolf,” and “Aimstas Paradise,” are as hit-or-miss as the comedy sketches.
The lavish PAC NYC is the right place for Between Two Knees. At intermission, I walked outside to the 9/11 Memorial, the moving tribute to the nearly three thousand men, women, and children killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The World Trade Center — among numerous other NYC buildings — was built by hundreds of Mohawk Skywalkers, and Native Americans arrived in force to the site after 9/11 to help in the dangerous cleanup. So Native Americans know all about 9/11, but non-Indians know little or nothing about December 29, a critical date in the history of this nation.
After intermission, Larry says, “Good evening, friends and relatives. Welcome back to Between Two Knees, an intergenerational tale of familial love, loss, and triumph. Thanks for returning. I know it can be a real slog to sit through these diversity shows. But if you’re still here with us, you’ve clearly been gifted with elevated artistic tastes. Everyone else ran home to rewatch their favorite Yellowstone spin-offs. Please note that those who left in a huff during intermission have been refunded the fair market value of their ticket, in beads. Aho, good trade.”
The show continues at PAC NYC through February 24. Tickets are $29 to $79; beads are not accepted.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Zora (April Matthis) and Pilar (Carmen M. Herlihy) try to save the bees in Kate Douglas’s The Apiary (photo by Joan Marcus)
THE APIARY
Second Stage Theater
Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $62-$106 2st.com/shows
There is no evidence that theoretical physicist Albert Einstein ever said, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” That doesn’t mean that the apocryphal viral quote doesn’t have some truth in it, as explored in Kate Douglas’s The Apiary, making its world premiere at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater.
As the audience enters the space, Pilar (Carmen M. Herlihy) is working at a desk stage right in a beekeeping suit, filling test tubes with dead bees, one by one, while listening to beloved 1970s hits by ABBA and others. There’s a similar desk stage left (which curiously goes unused); in the center is a lab shrouded in floor-to-ceiling netting, which contains four small beehives, a rolling table, industrial lighting, and a large yellow-tinted cube known as the graveyard. It’s not only bees who are endangered; the play is set twenty-two years in the future, but it could just as easily be tomorrow.
Cece (Nimene Wureh) walks in, sits in a chair in front of the lab, and talks to an unseen person about the proper way to treat bees. “Mama said — ‘If you don’t tell the bees about important events in your life, the bees will die. And lay a curse on the whole family.’” She then describes how, when her brother got married and did not tell the bees, the bees stopped making honey and nearly died until her mother intervened, showing the bees the wedding album. “They recovered,” Cece explains. “That time, they recovered.”
Gwen (Taylor Schilling) has some intriguing questions for Bryn (Nimene Wureh) in Second Stage world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)
The employees in this synthetic apiary are attempting to restore the fading bee population, facing disappointment after disappointment. Pilar is joined by Zora (April Matthis), a biochemist who has left a plum position in pharmaceuticals to become a low-level functionary in the downstairs of this mediocre facility, where “upstairs” never deigns to visit. When Pilar asks Zora why she made the change, Zora answers simply, “I like bees.” Pilar compares the job to be being a palliative caregiver, warning Zora, “This may be hard for you then. A lot of sweeping up dead bees. A lot of dead bees. A lot a lot of dead bees.” Zora replies, “I think it’s important. Not everyone wants to be there for the end. But someone should be here. Give them that.”
Their supervisor is the ultraserious, by-the-book Gwen (Taylor Schilling), who is immediately angry that proper hiring procedure and notifications have not been followed. She is suspicious of Zora, telling her that it is a bare-bones operation. “This isn’t some flashy experimental job with lots of funding and vacations and a 401K, okay. This isn’t — space exploration,” she states.
Zora is soon suggesting methods that might get the bee numbers back up, but Gwen, who has an ambitious five-year plan to become project director, argues that she is too busy trying to save their jobs to write reports requesting more funding, which could take months and months. Zora says that she’ll pay for all the materials herself, which intrigues Gwen. After one research method fails, a second, more promising and secretive one falls in Zora’s lap — but at a formidable cost.
Cece (Nimene Wureh) offers insight into how to restore the bee population in The Apiary (photo by Joan Marcus)
The bees’ life force is represented by Stephanie Crousillat, who occasionally pops up in the graveyard and performs interpretive dance; the more energetic she is, the more time the bees have, and, sadly, the more tired and withdrawn she is, the closer the bees are to the end. Her tight-fitting, barely there costume includes a vaguely insectlike mask, a stark contrast to the white lab suits worn by Zora, Pilar, and Gwen. (The costumes are by Jennifer Moeller, with scenic design by Walt Spangler, lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, sound by Christopher Darbassie, and original music by Grace McLean.)
At one point, Gwen, condemning space travel, shouts, “Like WE HAVE THINGS TO DO ON THIS PLANET YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!!” The cry gets to the heart of Douglas’s sharply stinging plot, which is as much about the bee crisis as the human one. When Cece describes how her mother related to bees, she could have just as well been talking about how people relate to one another and to the natural world; personal communication is vital, and in 2024, as well as 2046, people need to interact with others and with the earth’s creatures. When Zora explains about being there at the end for bees, she could have just as well been talking about how humans face death, that people need to be cared for and not merely left alone to die.
Director Kate Whoriskey (Clyde’s,Sweat) cleverly pollinates the story as it evolves into a taut thriller. Emmy nominee Schilling (Orange Is the New Black,A Month in the Country) is on target as Gwen, who has trouble seeing the forest for the trees as she battles so much red tape and personal ambition. Lucille Lortel nominee Herlihy (Bachelorette,A Delicate Balance) is sweet as honey as Pilar, who always tries to find the good in everything. Obie winner Matthis (Primary Trust,Toni Stone) again demonstrates her impressive range as Zora, who is determined to do whatever is necessary to save the planet. [ed. note: Matthis will be replaced by two-time Tony nominee Kara Young for the final week of the run, due to a scheduling conflict.] And Wureh shines in four roles, giving Cece, Kara, Anna, and Bryn distinct characteristics as they get involved in the project in a surprising way.
“The bees are very sensitive and so so smart,” Pilar tells Zora. “They dance! They tell jokes.”
She’s not just talking about the bees.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Revival of Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man runs February 16-25 at IATI Theater (photo by Marina Levitskaya)
THE UNEXPECTED MAN IATI Theater
64 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
February 16-25, $49.87 www.eventbrite.ca
“I’m prepared to risk any kind of adventure with you,” Martha imagines telling Paul in French playwright Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man. Martha then imagines Paul responding, “Come on, Martha, life is short.”
STEPS Theatre and Art Against Humanity are presenting a unique revival of the show February 16-25 at IATI Theater in the East Village, starring Roman Freud as the man and Mickey Pantano as the woman. As the play opens, they are sitting in the same train compartment, going from Paris to Frankfurt; Martha recognizes Paul as the author of the novel she is reading, The Unexpected Man, but she hesitates to take it out of her purse and read it right in front of him, believing it would be insensitive. Over the course of ninety minutes, they deliver internal monologues about their lives.
“Can never sleep on a train. Hard enough in bed, let alone on a train. Strange this woman never reads anything,” he wonders to himself.
“I like traveling. As soon as I set foot in Frankfurt, I shall be another person: the one who arrives is always another person, And so it is that one progresses, from one person to another, until it’s all over,” she explains to herself.
Their “conversation” touches on a wide range of topics, from art and religion to friendship and ex-lax. As the train approaches its destination, so does their connection.
The Unexpected Man debuted in England in 1998, starring Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon. Two and a half years later, Christopher Hampton’s translation ran at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, with Atkins and Alan Bates, earning a slew of award nominations.
This new version is directed by Slava Stepnov (White on White; Enemies, A Love Story) and produced by Polina Belkina, with set and costumes by Arcady Kotler and Elina Kotler. Reza’s previous works include two Tony winners for Best Play, Art and God of Carnage.
“Today I was thinking about what The Unexpected Man and Yasmina Reza brought to my life,” Freud recently posted on social media. “One of the huge accomplishments of this play is that so many characters are left outside the main storyline — friends, lovers, spouses, critics, writers, kids. They are mentioned frequently throughout the play, which creates a crowded feeling, as if you’re in the presence of many people, some invented on the spot, some already dead. The play has a cast of probably twenty people, reflected by only two storytellers. All those offstage characters live and breathe in the play. Also, The Unexpected Man — the book in the heroine’s purse. After my first reading of the play, this imaginary book became a point of obsession for me.”
The play runs for ten performances; tickets are $49.87.
“Did I write what I wanted to write? No, never. I wrote what I was capable of writing, not what I wanted to,” Paul says, encapsulating the human experience. “All you ever do is what you’re capable of.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Eddie Izzard plays nearly two dozen characters in one-woman Hamlet (photo by Carol Rosegg)
IZZARD HAMLET NEW YORK
The Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday – Sunday through March 16, $81-$125
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday, March 19 – April 14 www.eddieizzardhamlet.com
Eddie Izzard doesn’t make things easy for herself.
In winter 2022–23, she presented a one-woman version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at the Greenwich House Theater. The wonderful two-hour, two-act show was adapted by Izzard’s brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. Now the trio is taking on William Shakespeare’s classic revenge tragedy, Hamlet, with the full crew from the previous play. The production more than lives up to its great expectations.
Izzard once again is dressed in a goth steampunk outfit, designed by Tom Piper and Libby DaCosta, this time consisting of black boots, tight black leather pants, and a silvery black-and-green long peplum blazer over a neckline-revealing top. Piper’s set is a long, rectangular space with three narrow, vertical windows, recalling a room in a tower where damsels in distress are imprisoned as well as a room in a psychiatric facility where someone having difficulty with reality is treated. Tyler Elich’s lighting shifts among several emotional colors that shine through the windows and a panel running along the underside of the set’s ceiling.
Izzard casts an impressive figure onstage, appearing much bigger than her five-foot-seven frame. In a mesmerizing tour de force, she portrays twenty-three characters, including Prince Hamlet; the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the recently murdered king; Claudius, the king’s brother and Hamlet’s uncle, who now wears the crown; Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother who married her former brother-in-law before her husband’s body was cold; Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio; Hamlet’s true love, Ophelia; Ophelia’s father, Polonius, Claudius’s most trusted councilor; Laertes, Ophelia’s brother; and Fortinbras, the prince of Norway; in addition to the leader of a traveling theater company, two gravediggers, various Danish soldiers and courtiers, and others.
Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet has been extended at Greenwich House Theater and will then move to the Orpheum (photo by Carol Rosegg)
There are no costume changes; when shifting between characters, Izzard slightly alters her voice and position onstage, running back and forth, twisting her body, or adjusting her posture. But she brings down the house with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for whom she uses her hands when they speak, the effect enhanced by the deep red polish on her fingernails. (Just wait till you see how she deals with a fencing duel; the movement direction is by Didi Hopkins.)
Izzard delivers all the famous monologues (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,” “To be, or not to be,” “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” et al.) beautifully, lending each line its own nuance; it is never mere recitation. The few times Izzard, who is dyslexic, stumbled over a word or two, she quickly corrected it, displaying that she is in complete command of not only the text but what it means. The lack of props enhanced the power of the language and the intricacies of the plot. At one point, when a loud, distracting crinkling noise could be heard in the mezzanine, Izzard, in stride, directed a laserlike gaze at the perpetrator without missing a beat. She also occasionally ambles determinedly offstage, wandering through the aisles, making eye contact with the crowd as Hamlet shares his foibles.
The Aden-born Izzard is best known as a comedian, which might explain some of the inappropriate laughter intermittently coming from a handful of audience members the night I went. There are some very funny moments, but overall it’s a pretty serious drama.
In the last nine years, I’ve seen ten productions of and/or involving Hamlet, ranging from a German avant-garde version at BAM and an intense intellectual staging at Park Avenue Armory to a modern-day BIPOC update at the Public and on Broadway and a wildly unpredictable and flatulent interpretation at Japan Society.
Izzard Hamlet New York is another memorable adaptation to add to the ever-growing list.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
