this week in theater

YIDDISH PRECISION: NIGHT STORIES AT THE WILD PROJECT

Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel star in four spooky tales by Avrom Sutzkever (photo by Jeffrey Wertz)

NIGHT STORIES: 4 TALES OF REANIMATION BY AVROM SUTZKEVER
the wild project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Sunday through January 11, $54.22
thewildproject.com
www.congressforjewishculture.org

The wonderful duo of Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel have again teamed up with directors Moshe Yassur and Beate Hein Bennett, this time for Night Stories: Four Tales of Animation, a quartet of short works by Smorgon-born Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever, a leader of the Jewish Resistance and a Vilna ghetto survivor who wrote and spoke often about the Holocaust; the play is a follow-up to last December’s Bashevis’s Demons, which dramatized three Yiddish tales by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and was also produced by the Congress for Jewish Culture.

Running at the wild project through January 11, the sixty-five-minute Night Stories features supernatural fantasies that are reminiscent of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery but lack the final twist; in fact, the audience couldn’t tell when several of them had concluded. In addition, although each is told poetically amid an appropriately ominous atmosphere, unfortunate choices about the space can interfere with sight lines, resulting in the opening setting me off course from the start.

In the brief “A Child’s Hands,” Baker and Seigel stand at opposite sides at the front of the stage, emotionless as they perform the text in Yiddish. However, from my seat, Baker was blocking part of the supertitles, which are projected at the top back, behind him and Seigel. I had to shift quickly to the right and left to read the translation but even then could make out only some of it. The woman in front of me actually got up and changed her seat in the first row so she could see the words, adding to the distraction. Thus, it was hard to concentrate on what appeared to be an intense story about handprints on the frosty window of a cellar that holds a horse’s head and scraps from a women’s prayerbook.

“Lupus” is a solo piece in which Baker portrays a writer fed up with the spread of electricity, preferring to stay safely inside his apartment with his trusted old lantern. “Electricity is electric wires, electric chair. Maybe tomorrow they’ll make an electric bed, electric bride and groom, and electric children will be born. Or die,” he mutters to himself. “But the old lantern is like another living being. It’s my first appraiser. By night I read it my creations and according to the lantern’s expressive flame, I understand clearly which pieces can go to hell and which — to heaven.” He is soon joined by an orphaned shadow that he has resurrected, like his own Frankenstein’s monster, except this one, a former cyanide dealer called Lupus, wants him to “unalive” him. Instead, the writer reads from his manuscript, explaining, “I have a good memory because I’m not strong enough to forget.” Baker sits at a small table stage left, next to a divider onto which his shadow becomes Lupus. Although Baker does a good job using his voice to differentiate between the two characters, and Cameron Darwin Bossert’s lighting maintains the haunting feeling, the supertitles do not delineate who is saying which lines, so it’s often difficult to know who is speaking. And then the audience didn’t know it was over until the furniture began being rearranged.

In “There Where the Stars Spend the Night,” a man in a hat and suspenders (Baker), sitting on a park bench with his composition notebook, is joined by a woman (Seigel) who thinks he is the dead Volodya. “A miracle! How can you be alive, when your soul is no longer within you?” she declares. Deciding to go along with it, he responds, “I’ve been alive since I was born, maybe longer. And no one ever suggested such a divorce. True, I’ve never seen my soul, but I can swear it’s buried inside me safely and no sophisticated soul-thief has stolen it.” It’s an engaging exchange that also feels like more is to come.

The evening finishes with “Portrait in Blue Sweater,” about a writer who proudly wears the sweater his mother made him for Chanukah while he describes his friendship with real-life Vilna painter Chaim Urison. “A quiet type, his minimal speech was a pale imitation of his silence,” the writer says about the artist. “But his painting was eloquent, with an authenticity that shone out from underneath the colors, as if they were overpainted. Like clouds overpaint the sunset before a storm.” Evil spirits, souls, and a duel to the death are discussed until an image puts an exclamation point on it all.

Baker once again proves that he is a gem of Yiddish theater, as he has in such previous shows as God of Vengeance, Tevye Served Raw, and Waiting for Godot. There’s an elegant grace to the way he performs in Yiddish, a celebration of the language and its unique poetry, and he has a fine accomplice in Seigel, who is also a successful Yiddish singer-songwriter and music and culture scholar.

A program note points out, “The stories you will witness require your full sensory attention.” It also quotes Yiddish literature expert Professor Ruth R. Wisse, who writes in her introduction to the 1989 Sutzkever collection Prophecy of the Inner Eye, “For Sutzkever everything hangs on the precision of each Yiddish word. It is the supreme validation of reality and of his authentic powers as its prophet.” In addition to the problem I had following the English surtitles of “A Child’s Hands,” there were some dropped props and a few other minor distractions that impacted my overall enjoyment of the show, but I’m glad I saw it, and I will keep on going to anything Baker is involved with as he continues to resurrect the glory of Yiddish theater.

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

HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS? GLITZY REVIVAL MAKES DAZZLING NEW MOVES

Bryce Pinkham leads a supercharged ensemble in Chess Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

CHESS: A COLD WAR MUSICAL
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 3, $74-$571
chessbroadway.com

There are practically as many versions of the musical Chess as there are opening gambits in the fifteen-hundred-year-old game of intense strategy and mental acuity. With an original book by Tim Rice, music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and lyrics by Rice and Ulvaeus, the show has gone through multiple adaptations since the release of the concept album in 1984, from concert versions to music videos to full theatrical presentations in the West End in 1986, on Broadway in 1988, and around the world, attracting major directors (Trevor Nunn, Des McAnuff, Jim Sharman, Rob Marshall) and actors (Josh Groban, Judy Kuhn, Raúl Esparza, Carolee Carmello), featuring significantly changed books (by Richard Nelson, Robert Coe, and Rice himself, several times) involving song swaps and deletions and major plot alterations, often due to shifting world politics, primarily between Russia/the Soviet Union and the United States.

The current Broadway production, scheduled to continue through May 3 at the Imperial Theatre, where it’s breaking house box-office records, is the first iteration I’ve seen, and I found it to be a ton more exciting than watching, well, a chess match. Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot) has teamed up with Emmy-winning film and television writer, actor, and director Danny Strong, making his Broadway debut, to reimagine the show, and it’s a major triumph filled with clever and insightful moves, despite occasionally delving into soapy melodrama, while not overplaying the cold war connections between the 1980s and today.

“Nineteen seventy-nine. The entire world is on high alert, trapped in a never ending confrontation between two opposing ideologies: communism and democracy,” the Arbiter (Bryce Pinkham), a kind of narrator and referee who oversees the proceedings, announces at the start. The ensemble belts out, “No one can deny that these are difficult times,” and the Arbiter responds, “It’s the US vs. USSR / Yet we more or less are / To our credit putting all that aside / We have swallowed our pride. . . . / No one’s way of life is threatened / by a flop.” The ensemble adds, “But we’re gonna smash their bastard / Make him wanna change his name / Take him to the cleaners and devastate him / Wipe him out, humiliate him / We don’t want the whole world saying / ‘They can’t even win a game!’ We have never reckoned on coming in second / There’s no use in losin’.”

Just in case you’re not already considering how the plot aligns with the foreign policy of President Donald Trump compared to that of Ronald Reagan, who was commander-in-chief when the show was written, the American chess master is named Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit), who is in love with his second, the beautiful theoretician Florence Vassy (Lea Michele). They are preparing for a major match against the brilliant Anatoly Sergievsky (Nicholas Christopher), whose handler is the devious Alexander Molokov (Bradley Dean). Molokov is quick to remind Anatoly what happened to the previous Soviet champion who lost to an American, but Anatoly tells him, “I do not fear sharing the same fate as Boris Ivanovich. The State cannot execute a man that is already dead.” But Molokov is relentless in his defense of his country, later using Anatoly’s estranged wife, Svetlana (Hannah Cruz), against him.

As the players travel to Merano, Stockholm, and, most famously, Thailand, where they spend a memorable night in Bangkok, relationships come together and fall apart, loyalty is tested, and the SALT II treaty is hotly debated as the KGB and the CIA fight to assert their prominence, with the game of chess as its centerpiece.

Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit) and Florence Vassy (Lea Michele) have a complicated personal and professional relationship in Chess (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Inspired in part by the famous 1972 world championship between American Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union held in Reykjavík, Iceland, which was seen as a microcosm of the ongoing battle between the US and the USSR, Chess is a thrilling evening of theater, highlighted by Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Ohio State Murders), who serves as an engaging ringleader to the proceedings, addressing the audience directly and including playful contemporary references. He is often accompanied by a terrifically talented ensemble performing Lorin Latarro’s dazzling choreography; the singers and dancers are like a glorious symphony that makes you instantly forget the book’s occasional meanderings and messiness.

The orchestra is spread across David Rockwell’s glittering multilevel set, which boasts columns of chess pieces and live and archival video footage by Peter Nigrini. The costumes, by Tom Broecker, glitter as well, particularly for the ensemble, with flashy lighting by Kevin Adams and blasting sound by John Shivers.

Yes, there are too many songs, Freddie’s transition to being an announcer is annoying, the love triangle is messy, the politics are oversimplified, and the ballads are histrionic, but Mayer and Strong keep the actual chess to a minimum, and every time the show threatens to give in to the lowest common denominator, Pinkham and the ensemble swoop in to rescue it as the endgame approaches.

This Chess is certainly no flop.

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

LAST CHANCE: SIX MISS AND DON’T-MISS SHOWS CLOSING THIS WEEKEND

Laurie Metcalf can’t believe another Broadway show she’s in is closing early (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $74–$206
littlebearridgeroad.com

For me, the biggest disappointment of the year in theater is the early closing of Samuel D. Hunter’s sensational Little Bear Ridge Road. Originally scheduled to run until February 14, it is instead closing December 21, after opening on October 30 to a bevy of rave reviews. The play is a gripping ninety-five minutes of nonstop tension, brilliantly directed by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello on Scott Pask’s beautifully minimalist set. On a couch on a round, carpeted platform, Sarah (Laurie Metcalf) and her nephew, Ethan (Micah Stock), spend a lot of time watching TV and complaining about their lives following the passing of Sarah’s brother, Ethan’s estranged father, a drug addict who died a miserable death. It’s a fabulous Broadway debut for Hunter, whose previous superb works include A Bright New Boise, The Whale, Lewiston/Clarkston, Greater Clements, A Case for the Existence of God, and Grangeville. I apologize for all the superlatives, but each one is well deserved.

Perhaps it’s what I’ve just dubbed the Metcalf curse.

Despite having earned four Emmys (out of twelve nominations), two Tonys (out of six nominations), and an Oscar nod, Metcalf has been in several shows that have shut their doors early, although not because of her performance. For every success like Three Tall Women and A Doll’s House, Part 2, there’s Hillary and Clinton, Grey House, The Other Place, and the aptly titled Misery.

In Little Bear Ridge Road, Metcalf plays Sarah, a nurse and loner who seems to be mad at the world, ripping off such one-liners as “Just because it’s so complicated that you have to watch an episode recap every week doesn’t mean it’s better,” “Why are you still here?!,” and “All this time you’ve thought I had an issue with you being gay? That’s the most interesting thing about you.” Ethan is a wannabe writer who is deeply uncomfortable in his own skin and exploring a potential relationship with an astrophysicist named James (John Drea) he met online. The narrative takes place between 2020 and 2022, and the pandemic plays a key role in how characters interact with each other, whether out at a bar or sitting home watching television, especially Extraterrestrial. Heather Gilbert’s intimate lighting is exceptional, making the audience feel like it’s on the couch, hanging out with Sarah, Ethan, and James.

Talking about the Orion constellation, James tells Ethan, “Okay, so — all three stars in the belt look like they’re in a line, but they’re actually spread out over about eight hundred light years. The closest is like twelve hundred light years away and the farthest is like two thousand.” It’s a clever metaphor that relates to how far away people can be even when they’re right next to each other — or conversing online. It’s both hilarious and meaningful when Sarah thinks she is texting Kenny, a handyman who is helping them with Ethan’s father’s house, but instead finds that she has accidentally FaceTimed him.

Hunter, who wrote the play specifically for Metcalf’s return to Chicago’s Steppenwolf company after a fourteen-year absence, brings it all together in a poignant finale that incorporates so many major and minor details and what seemed to be asides but then form a cohesive and thought-provoking whole, like a musical composition without a note out of place.

So why is it closing so early?

If I knew that, I’d be a producer.

James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris, and Bobby Cannavale star as three friends reaching a crisis point in Art (photo by Matthew Murphy)

ART
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $136.10 – $371.10
artonbroadway.com

One of my favorite theatrical moments of 2025 occurred at the end of the matinee of Art I attended. As the curtain closed, James Corden gave a little hop, skip, and jump, grabbing onto the shoulders of his two costars, Bobby Cannavale and Neil Patrick Harris, as a wide, childlike smile broke out across his face. It was one of the most happy-making things I’d seen all year.

It made the whole experience that much more enjoyable, helping me forget some of the holes in what is a pleasurable if not nearly as deep as it wants to be show. What are these men doing in Paris? Were they ever really close friends? Can Marc (Cannavale) and Serge (Harris) just leave poor Yvan (Corden) alone already?

When the audience enters the Music Box Theatre, they are greeted by a framed white rectangle on the red curtain, not only representing the white painting that Serge has paid three hundred thousand dollars for, but also the blank slate we all come into the world with, onto which we project our personal likes and dislikes, including how we appreciate, or don’t, art itself. When the play is over, some will have loved it, some will have despised it, and other, perhaps most, will find themselves in between. Friends will defend their views, just as Serge defends his purchase to Marc, who is insulted that Serge spent so much money on a white canvas, while Yvan is caught in the middle.

After Marc calls the painting “shit,” Serge tells the audience, “He doesn’t like the painting. Fine . . . But there was no warmth in the way he reacted. No attempt. No warmth when he dismissed it without a thought. Just that vile pretentious laugh. A real know it all laugh. I hated that laugh.”

Marc decides to get Yvan’s opinion, explaining, “Yvan’s a very tolerant guy, which of course, when it comes to relationships, is the worst thing you can be. Yvan’s tolerant because he couldn’t care less. If Yvan tolerates the fact that Serge has spent three hundred grand on some piece of white shit, it means he couldn’t care less about Serge. Obviously.”

Are we nothing more than our thoughts about art — or, for that matter, politics or other loaded subjects? Can each one of us see a white painting differently without casting aspersions?

Art was written in French by Yasmina Reza and premiered at Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris in 1994. Christopher Hampton’s English translation debuted in London two years later, with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, and Ken Stott, and made it to Broadway in 1999 with Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina. It’s a star-driven vehicle, so director Scott Ellis gives each actor the chance to shine, and Cannavale, Harris, and Corden chew up the scenery with glee, especially Corden, whose Yvan is a kind of everyman not wanting to fight with his besties, more concerned about his impending wedding, which has reached the crisis-level planning stage. When Marc asks Yvan if he would be happy if Serge gave the painting to him and his bride as a present, he says to the audience, “Of course it doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t make me happy, but, generally speaking, I’m not the sort of person who can say I’m happy, just like that. . . . You’re either happy or you’re not happy, what’s why wouldn’t I be got to do with it?”

Exactly.

A senior retirement community is clouded with an air of mystery in Everything Is Here (photo by Mari Eimas-Dietrich)

EVERYTHING IS HERE
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 20, $75.50
www.59e59.org

One of my favorite plays of 2023 was Annie Baker’s Infinite Life, which takes place at a Northern California clinic that treats chronic pain sufferers, mainly women.

One of my favorite plays of 2025 was Talking Band’s Triplicity, an experimental work about the interconnected, overlapping lives of four strangers in New York City.

Peggy Stafford’s Everything Is Here is a charming and gentle tale that is like Talking Band’s version of Infinite Life.

Bev (Jan Leslie Harding), Janice (Mia Katigbak), and Bonnie (Petronia Paley) live at a senior community retirement facility, where they participate in programs, sit around and discuss personal issues, and are taken care of by a young nurse named Nikki (Susannah Millonzi). The play begins with Grant (Pete Simpson), who runs several of the programs, asking the women to lie down on the floor and follow his instructions:

“There are these huge old trees that you don’t even know how old they really are / Maybe they’re ancient? / You’re not sure but this thought crosses your mind: ANCIENT TREES,” he says. “You stop dead in your tracks / Stop right now / Everybody stop / Don’t move / Okay, good / Something is gone that should be there / And it was there / In your pocket and now it’s not.” The audience falls under his spell as well.

For the next eighty minutes, the characters converse about dogs and cats, Salisbury steak, the large garden gnome just outside the window, Middle Earth, assisted suicide, and trust. They feed the fish, worry about a dangerous tree branch that could fall at any moment, and help Grant audition for a local production of A Streetcar Named Desire. (The curiously comforting set is by Richard Hoover.)

We soon learn that Bev is considering leaving, Janice is a kleptomaniac, Bonnie is a fine Blanche DuBois, and Nikki and Grant take a liking to each other.

But at the center of it all is a constant feeling of loss, of something that’s missing, physically, emotionally, and psychologically, with a hovering sense of impending doom.

Everything Is Here is worth seeing for the excellent cast alone, a joy to behold, whether they’re arguing, getting their vital signs checked, or dancing in their chairs to Lisa Fagan’s minimalist choreography. (Note: Simpson and Katigbak were in Infinite Life, and Simpson and Millonzi were in Berlindia!, which also used a goldfish tank as a metaphor, so the closeness of the actors is palpable.) Finn (The Invention of Tragedy, Doomocracy) adds just the right touches, and Stafford (Motel Cherry, 16 Words or Less with Katigbak) maintains a level of mystery around the proceedings, providing no easy answers in her abstract narrative.

On the way out, don’t be surprised if you reach into your pockets, wondering if something is missing, if everything is where it’s supposed to be.

Archduke takes some playful liberties with famous assassination (photo by Joan Marcus)

ARCHDUKE
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $69-$102
www.roundabouttheatre.org

On June 28, 1914, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which led directly to the start of WWI. Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie winner Rajiv Joseph, who has written such complex and intriguing shows as Gruesome Playground Injuries, Describe the Night, and Dakar 2000, imagines the events leading up to that fateful day in Archduke, a delicious, if slight, dark comedy.

The assassination plot is orchestrated by Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic (a scenery-gobbling Patrick Page), a real-life Serbian military officer and cofounder of the Black Hand, a secret society dedicated to “Unification or Death.” With the help of a doctor, Apis convinces three young men, Gavrilo (Jake Berne), Trifko (Adrien Rolet), and Nedeljko (Jason Sanchez), that they have tuberculosis and should accomplish one last heroic deed before they die: murder the archduke.

“I never had no meaning. Not in my life. Never had it. Never will have it,” Nedeljko says to Gavrilo. “I wasted my life.” But given a new sense of purpose, the three men go to Apis’s resplendent home, highlighted by a huge wall map of Eastern Europe, are served by Apis’s dotty housekeeper, Sladjana (Kristine Nielsen), and plan the attack.

Joseph and Tony- and Obie-winning director Darko Tresnjak mix in a little of the Three Stooges’ You Nazty Spy! here, a touch of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator there, along with a dash of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. At just over two hours with an intermission, Archduke is too long, and some of the slapstick grows repetitive and falls flat, such as Sladjana’s efforts to find Apis’s “special box.” It probably would have benefited from being streamlined to a tighter ninety minutes.

That said, it’s still an enjoyable take on an international tragedy with far-reaching ramifications while also commenting on disaffected, angry, aimless young men and political violence, no laughing matter in the United States today.

“Cats do not lay eggs,” Apis says at one point. “Never let anyone ever tell you that they do.”

Yes, the Habsburg hegemony can be funny.

Oklahoma Samovar shares the story of five generations of a Jewish family in America (photo by Marina Levitskaya-Khaldey)

OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR
The Downstairs at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Sunday through December 21, $25-300
www.lamama.org

Prior to seeing Oklahoma Samovar at La Mama, all I knew about Jews in the American West I learned from Blazing Saddles and The Frisco Kid, two comedies starring Gene Wilder that feature a bit of Yiddish. In 1987, award-winning author, teacher, and playwright Alice Eve Cohen met her eighty-seven-year-old great-aunt Sylvia, who shared with Cohen her family’s remarkable history fleeing from persecution in Latvia and starting a farm during the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, the only Jews to do so. Cohen has been working on the play, which won the 2021 National Jewish Playwriting Contest, since 1987, and it is now making its world premiere at La MaMa through December 21.

Directed by Eric Nightengale, the play begins in 1987, when twenty-one-year-old Emily travels from Brooklyn to an Oklahoma farm where Sylvia lives, bringing with her an urn with her mother’s ashes. She also has a tape recorder to document Sylvia’s answers to her many questions, most importantly: Why did her mother want her ashes spread over the farm, which Emily knew nothing about? Sylvia shares her story as the play goes back and forth between eras and several actors switch among multiple roles: Nadia Diamond is Emily and Rose, her maternal great-grandmother; Seren Kaiser is Clara, Emily’s mother as a little girl; Sahar Lev-Shomer is Jake, Rose and Sylvia’s pioneer father; Alex J. Gould is Ben, Rose’s husband, and Max, Jake’s best friend; Sarah Chalfie is Hattie, Rose and Sylvia’s mother, and Maxine, Ben’s gallivanting, bisexual sister; and the scene-stealing Joyce Cohen is Sylvia at ages four, fourteen, forty-five, and eighty-seven as well as some minor characters.

The narrative follows Jake as he emigrates from Latvia to New York to avoid fighting in the Russian army; meets Max, who helps him find a job; is joined by his fiancée, Hattie, who is not keen on moving to Chandler, Oklahoma, where there is no synagogue and no other Jews; and begins raising a family. Emily is initially tight on time; like Hattie, Chandler is not at first her cup of tea — she believes that Sylvia is living on stolen land — but she soon becomes enthralled with learning about her ancestors. At the center of it all is a Russian samovar that Hattie brought from the old country.

“Look at this samovar. It’s the family heirloom,” Sylvia tells Emily, continuing, “Mom and I were starting to – we were just beginning to make a connection, and — suddenly she’s gone. She wanted me to come here with her ashes, and I have to know I’m doing the right thing. Sylvia, you’ve told me stories, but not what I need to know. Could you fast-forward a few decades?” Sylvia cautions, “You’re in a big rush. Try switching from coffee to tea, might help ya slow down.”

The first act sets everything up well, but the second act slows it all down. Characters and relationships get confusing, the set changes involving colored windows/walls feel extraneous, and standard melodrama takes over. It probably would have worked much better as a streamlined ninety-minute one-act.

There are lovely, touching moments throughout and creative staging, but it tries too hard to be an epic while raising all-too-relevant issues such as immigration, assimilation, and bigotry. “There’s no antisemitism in Chandler,” Rose asserts. Ben replies, “Where there are Jews, there is antisemitism.” It ends up being not quite enough to sustain its length, although it’s nearly worth it just to watch the wonderful Cohen, who is endearing as Sylvia.

Even Kristin Chenoweth can’t save The Queen of Versailles from getting high on its own supply (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES
St. James Theatre
246 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $88.48-$441.28
queenofversaillesmusical.com

It’s never fun writing a review for a show that is closing early; it’s sort of like that old saying, Don’t speak ill of the dead.

When I went to the St. James Theatre to see The Queen of Versailles, a musical based on the hit documentary, I was fully prepared to find something to like about it despite all the negative chatter that was circulating. And indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed the first scene, which takes place in Paris in 1661, as Louis XIV (Pablo David Laucerica) is getting ready to move to his new home in Versailles.

“I am the king, Louis Quatorze / My life is shinier than yours / In fact, I am the living proof / That life is quite unfair / I am the Sun King, like Apollo, / But with better hair,” Louis sings in an extravagantly decorated room. “And now that I am twenty-three / And fin’lly firmly in command / To celebrate the glory that is I, / I want to build a palace / Splendiferous and grand, / The grandest palace ever to be seen in any land, / In a little country village called Versailles!”

I also was all in on the second scene, with the action moving to Florida in 2006, where Jackie Siegel (Kristin Chenoweth) is overseeing the construction of her own Versailles with her fabulously wealthy, much older husband, David (F. Murray Abraham).

“We didn’t know we would need / The biggest home in America / That was never part of our plan,” Jackie sings. “But ev’ryone has needs to be filled, / Add ’em all up and we’ve got to build / The biggest home in America, / Because we can.”

After that, well, I just couldn’t.

Jackie and David live with Jackie’s daughter, the cynical Victoria (Nina White), and are soon joined by Victoria’s cousin, Jonquil Peed (Tatum Grace Hopkins). Also hovering around are Gary (Greg Hildreth), David’s business associate, and Sofia Flores (Melody Butiu), the Siegels’ nanny. The story devolves quickly into tawdry melodrama, along with clunky staging and less-than-compelling musical numbers. The book, which refuses to decide whether Jackie is a strong woman, a greedy socialite, or a misunderstood wife and mother, is by Olivier nominee Lindsey Ferrentino, the director is Tony winner Michael Arden, and the music and lyrics are by Oscar winner Stephen Schwartz, all of whom should have known better.

Tony and Emmy winner Chenoweth powers through the one hundred and fifty minutes with grit and determination — and, of course, fanciful costumes (by Christian Cowan) — and it’s always a treat to see the now-eighty-six-year-old Abraham, even if it turns out that he’s not exactly a song-and-dance man. But it’s impossible to care about anything that happens on Tony winner Dane Laffrey’s often elegant set (but the less said about his video projections, the better) or about any of the characters, particularly Jackie herself.

In a script note, Ferrentino explains, “The Queen of Versailles is the story of one family that reflects an entire country — a modern fable about the American Dream and what it has become in contemporary America. Our main character does what America teaches: work harder, want bigger, never stop. Her unfinished palace becomes a mirror to a culture that mistakes accumulation for meaning. Jackie is as complicated as the nation that created her.”

Not quite, especially as the country is mired in another economic crisis propelled by the growing wealth gap between the 1% and everyone else.

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

NOT JUST BLACK AND WHITE: MEET THE CARTOZIANS AND ARMENIAN AMERICAN HERITAGE

Lawyer Wallace McCamant (Will Brill) seeks to help Armenian immigrants gain US citizenship in Meet the Cartozians (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

MEET THE CARTOZIANS
Second Stage Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 14, $69-$125
2st.com/shows

Talene Yeghisabet Monahon makes a giant leap forward with her exquisitely rendered new play, Meet the Cartozians, a timely and sensitive tale of immigration, assimilation, racial profiling, and culture. The first act takes place in 1923–24 in Portland, Oregon, as Tatos Cartozian (Nael Nacer), an Armenian-born Christian, and his family must fight to prove he is white to prevent the US government from canceling his naturalization. The second act occurs one hundred years later in Glendale, California, as four American-born Armenians prepare to share stories celebrating their heritage on a reality show hosted by an immensely popular celebrity influencer (Tamara Sevunts) who is a descendant of that family.

“We are all trying to uh, let’s say, make sense? Of why this is happening now,” Hazel (Obie winner Susan Pourfar), Tatos’s daughter, says to their well-heeled lawyer, Wallace McCamant (Tony winner Will Brill), in 1923, a sly reference to the treatment of immigrants and people of color today.

A century later, Alan O’Brien (Brill), a production tech on the TV program Meet the Cartozians, tells the guests, “So let me get this straight. The original Cartozians fought to be white so that Armenians could have privileges, right? And now, it sort of feels like Armenians are fighting to not be white . . . so you can like, get more privileges. Am I right about that?”

In 1923, Tatos, a soft-spoken man who speaks heavily accented broken English, lives in a lovely home with his wife (Sevunts), their daughter, Hazel, and his mother, Markrid (two-time Tony winner Andrea Martin). While Hazel and her brother, the impeccably attired Vahan (Raffi Barsoumian), are adapting to the American way of life, the stern Markrid is trying to preserve as much Armenian tradition as she can. After insisting that Wallace take a piece of her homemade kadayif, a sweet dessert, and seeing that he has not finished it, she is offended. Hazel asserts, “I’m sorry. In Armenia, it is a bit rude not to eat. But in America, I think maybe it is rude to force someone to eat.” When Markrid brings out a plate of the sesame-based simit, Wallace declines to taste one, further upsetting Markrid.

Talking about the case, Wallace says, “In 1790, the good men who founded this country extended the offer of naturalized citizenship to all ‘free white persons of good character.’ That was who they felt oughta become American citizens.” Vahan, who works with his father, sister, and naturalized uncle in the family’s successful oriental rug business, proclaims that they are solid white Christians, but Wallace explains that other factors are involved, including skin and hair color, eye and face shape, and “the terrific tendency of Armenians to intermingle and procreate with white populations all over the world.” Wallace commiserates with the Cartozians, pointing out that his paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine and experienced bigotry when he first came to America.

They also refer several times indirectly to the genocide of approximately 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during WWI, leaving them without a nation. “It is no longer a place,” Tatos says. Hazel counters, “I think it is fine to say Armenia still. I say Armenia when I speak of home.” Tatos responds, “This is our home. Portland. America.”

The cast of Meet the Cartozians portrays different characters in 1924 and 2024 (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In 2024, Robert Zakian (Nacer), Rose Sarkisian (Martin), and Nardek Vartoumian (Barsoumian) are in the home of Leslie Malconian (Pourfar), which features a Christmas tree, a rack of clothes, film equipment, an oriental rug, and an empty chair facing a table and a couch. The four TV guests, who have never met before, select over-the-top costumes that are supposed to represent their heritage, but they have become so Americanized that they don’t really know that much about where they came from.

When Leslie brings out two plates of homemade simit, one gluten-free, Rose starts an argument about Armenian cuisine, which she is not fond of. “I miss the food Mama made,” Robert says wistfully, a potent comment since the actors portraying Robert and Rose played Tatos and Markrid in the first act. Alan, whose family, like Wallace’s, emigrated from Ireland, tries to commiserate with the Armenians, pointing out that his paternal grandfather experienced bigotry when he first came to America and was not considered to be white; Brill plays both Alan and Wallace.

As the characters await the arrival of the host, they get into heated discussions about Armenian history, cultural appropriation, skin color, politics, and the genocide. Praising an episode of the series in which the host visited Armenia, Rose notes, “Most people in the world never knew what the Armenian genocide was before that. Many people didn’t even know that Armenia was a country before that.” Nardek adds, “A lot of people still don’t, sadly.”

They certainly will know after seeing Meet the Cartozians.

The play was inspired by the pop-culture phenomenon Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the reality show that detailed the lives of the Armenian American Kardashian clan for twenty seasons, and the actual 1925 court case United States v. Cartozian, in which the Portland firm of McCamant & Thompson represented rug dealer Tatos Osgihan Cartozian in his quest to gain American citizenship.

Monahon, a Massachusetts-born, New York City–based actor and playwright of Armenian and Irish descent, has previously explored historical fiction in The Good John Proctor (the Salem witch trials), Jane Anger (the 1606 London plague), and How to Load a Musket (Revolutionary and Civil War reeanactors). In Meet the Cartozians, Monahon has superbly melded fact and fiction, expertly linking the two different time periods and relating the action in both eras to today’s arrest, deportation, and murder of legal and illegal immigrants, often based on racial profiling. Tatiana Kahvegian’s sets and Enver Chakartash’s costumes further delineate the differences Armenians experienced in 1924 and 2024.

Monahon and Tony-winning director David Cromer (Prayer for the French Republic, A Case for the Existence of God) have created believable characters involved in convincing situations that, although they are specifically about Armenian Americans, also relate to so many others who have come to the United States in search of a better life. The outstanding cast includes three actors of Armenian descent, Barsoumian, Sevunts, and Martin, whose name adorns the Andrea Martin Performing Arts Auditorium in Armenia.

As funny as Meet the Cartozians is, it also tackles ongoing complex sociopolitical issues that are pervasive in modern-day America, under the current administration; even Kim Kardashian herself went public with criticism of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, particularly how ICE is tearing families apart. Somewhere, the Cartozians are smiling down on her and Monahon as the battle continues.

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

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? CHERRY LANE REOPENS WITH DELIGHTFULLY WEIRD WEER

Mark brings Christina closer to him in Natalie Palamides’s Weer at the Cherry Lane (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

WEER
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $89-$169
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

One of my favorite theatrical moments of the year happened in Natalie Palamides’s outrageously funny and insanely inventive Weer. Mark is making a critically important phone call, and I desperately prayed for Christina to quickly return to the stage and answer it. I looked to the far corner, anxiously waiting on the edge of my seat, hoping she would pick it up — when it suddenly hit me that Christina was already there: Weer is a one-woman show in which Palamides is playing both roles, the right side of her body Mark, the left side Christina. Palamides, a trained improv clown, had me believing there were two fully embodied characters in the extraordinary ninety-minute satiric, deranged rom-com like no other. I rejoiced, so thoroughly in love with my reaction.

I went into Weer knowing absolutely nothing about it; I didn’t know who was in it or what it was about. And that made it all the more memorable. The run, which was extended several times at the newly refurbished Cherry Lane, is sold out, so I don’t mind sharing the details of my experience here (spoiler alert!), but if you’re planning on trying to get rush or standby tickets, don’t read on until after you’ve given it a shot.

The Pittsburgh-born Palamides won the Total Theatre Award at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Nate — A One Man Show, a big success on Netflix two years later. In the wildly unpredictable and participatory performance, Palamides wrestles with male toxicity as she portrays Nate, a gruff, hirsute dude who announces early on, “I guess I get to do whatever I want . . . to whoever I want . . . in this room.”

Weer takes place during a New Year’s Eve gathering in 1999, complete with worries that all hell might break loose at midnight, when Y2K threatens to destroy the world. But for ninety minutes, all hell does break loose onstage, as the narrative shifts to 1996, when Mark and Christina meet-cute, and then back to the party, where the couple faces several challenges. Palamides’s awesome costume (by Ashley Dudek) and over-the-top makeup feature a flannel shirt, a bushy mane, a beard and mustache, and chest hair on one side, a belly-revealing red knit top, long hair with colorful clips, jewelry, and a woman’s shoe on the other, positing Mark and Christina as old-fashioned gender stereotypes; he has a deep, gravelly, full-throated voice, while she has a softer, more compassionate tone.

Natalie Palamides plays both roles at the same time in Weer (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

Palamides, who also wrote and directed the show, expertly flips sides — or individual body parts — as Mark and Christina talk, kiss, dance, argue, shower, drive, and have sex on Gabriel Evansohn’s wonderfully scattershot set, which is filled with surprises that arrive with the pull of a rope or a step on an odd prop (designed by lucas a degirolamo). Word of warning: You will be provided with a plastic poncho if you’re in the first row, and not just because water might be sprayed.

There is no official script; the sturm and drang is all in Palamides’s head as she incorporates the audience into the controlled mayhem, mugging to the crowd, tossing out knowing glances, and asking a few people to join her onstage or speak from their seats. She has us eating out of her hand every step of the way, at least when we’re not practically rolling on the floor laughing. She has a ton of fun toying with the physical concept, sharing such self-reflexive dialogue as “She’s like my other half” and “Weer never gonna be separated like that again,” as well as the psychological approach, exploring the elements of masculinity and femininity in each of us.

Palamides, who does a lot of voice work on cartoons (Bob’s Burgers, Duncanville, Haunted Hotel) in addition to playing Mara in the Progressive insurance commercials, is irresistible as Mark and Christina, whether she is clothed or unclothed, baring her body and soul in uproarious ways. She also includes an apt Gen X soundtrack, with such songs as Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” (“If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks that suspect / They could never love anyone”), Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (“Well, the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’ / Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin’ / Didn’t make sense not to live for fun / Your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb / So much to do, so much to see”), and Pearl Jam’s emotive car-accident cover “Last Kiss” (“Oh, where, oh, where can my baby be?”).

The title, Weer, comes from how Mark’s family ridiculously pronounces the word deer as if they were Elmer Fudd — the hunted animal figures prominently in the show — and how both Mark and Christina are not able to exactly figure out their relationship through the years, often repeating to each other “Weer,” as in “We’re . . . ,” but unable to finish the thought.

I have to admit that when I first entered the Cherry Lane, I was extremely concerned. Purchased in 2023 by the film company A24, the theater has a smaller lobby area where ticket holders battle for space with diners waiting to go into the new, upscale Wild Cherry restaurant. There was a long, roped-off line for the restrooms, and a concession stand was selling popcorn and drinks as if we were seeing a movie. (Notably, it is now a for-profit venture where it previously was a nonprofit, making its location on Commerce St. rather apt.) Popcorn at the theater? The smell and noise had me on the brink of a conniption. Fortunately, Weer is so engaging, and the laughter so continuous, that those anticipated distractions melted away quickly, as the audience had no time to eat or drink. I do wonder what will happen during a quiet, dark drama, but that’s for another day.

Even the program gets in on the entertaining absurdities, with whimsical art, an advertisement in which Palamides offers relationship advice via email, and a spread that asks, “Whose side are you on?”

I know whose side I’m on.

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

PREACHING TO THE CHOIR: THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Kit Green leads a multitalented cast in disappointing North American premiere at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 2-14, $40-$165
www.armoryonpark.org

The continuing attempted reclamation of the longtime gay slur “faggots” continues with the North American premiere of Ted Huffman and Philip Venables’s parable The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, running at Park Ave. Armory through December 14. In this case, it’s a lost cause.

Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, about queerness and the British royal family, just received yet another extension at Studio Seaview. In September, Baryshnikov Arts Center presented Kevin Carillo’s Figaro/Faggots, a mashup of Larry Kramer’s satirical 1978 novel, Faggots, and Mozart and Da Ponte’s 1786 opera, Le nozze di Figaro. And in August, TheaterLab staged Topher Payne’s Angry Fags, an election tale that deals with queer stories in a post-Trump world.

A baroque fantasia with music ranging from folk to medieval to opera to dance, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions was adapted from writer Larry Mitchell and illustrator Ned Asta’s 1977 book, when the F-word in question was much more a part of rampant homophobia and gay-bashing; the fifteen-member cast says “faggots” about a hundred times in a hundred minutes, but that doesn’t necessarily make its use sting any less, depending on one’s history with it.

The performers are already congregating on Rosie Elnile’s wide open set as the audience enters the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, building a sense of community. On three sides of the neatly arranged platform stage are numerous unmatched chairs, a clothes rack, a few tables, and such instruments as a harp, a gong, a cello, and several pianos on wheels. The show begins with the following declaration, complete with surtitles projected on a small screen hanging from above:

“It’s been a long time since the last revolutions / and the faggots and their friends are still not free. / There still exists a faint memory of the past when the faggots and their friends were free. / The memory lives in the faggots’ bones. / It appears late at night when their bones are quietest. / When the memory visits them, the faggots know / that they must find each other in order to survive. / So while the men are sleeping, they emerge from the corners of the devastated city / and they go searching for other faggots in the hidden places: / in alleyways and abandoned piers and empty parks and unlit warehouses. / And there, in the moonlight, the faggots will enact the ritual of the brief encounter.”

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is based on a 1977 illustrated gay parable/manifesto (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The show is constructed like a healing ritual as the performers, all of whom participate in the storytelling and play an instrument, hold hands, hug, dance, form a circle, and offer warm, caring smiles to one another and the audience. Olivier Award–winning transdisciplinary artist Kit Green, wearing a series of tight-fitting, colorful gowns and skirts with high heels (the otherwise casual costumes are by choreographer Theo Clinkard), serves as a kind of host and narrator, leading the festivities, along with her right-hand colleague, Yandass, who stands out in a dynamic solo dance. The rest of the energetic, multitalented cast consists of soprano Tamara Banješević, accordionist Valerie Barr, plucked-string instrumentalist Kerry Bursey, cellist Jacob Garside, chamber musician Conor Gricmanis, woodwind doubler Rianna Henriques, soprano Mariamielle Lamagat, baritone Themba Mvula, pianist and music director Yshani Perinpanayagam, transdisciplinary artist Meriel Price, countertenor and multi-instrumentalist Collin Shay, baritone Danny Shelvey, and harpist Joy Smith.

The book was inspired by Mitchell and Asta’s time living in the Lavender Hill gay and lesbian commune outside of Ithaca that they helped found in 1970, partly in response to the Stonewall riots. “People in gay liberation tended to talk about [how] gay male culture of the 1960s really centered on ideas of isolation and loneliness, and this was going to be what gay communes solved,” Yale historian Stephen Vider says in the 2014 documentary short Lavender Hill: a love story.

Unfortunately, the various components don’t come together to form a cohesive whole, unable to bear the weight of such an underwhelming narrative and never capturing the joy in Asta’s black-and-white line drawings. The Faggots and Their Friends is a fable/manifesto that pits “the faggots” against “the men,” essentially all white cis males who live in and rule the land of Ramrod, led by Warren-and-his-Fuckpole. (Ramrod may have been named for the famed Greenwich Village gay leather bar, where three years after the book was published the West Street Massacre took place, in which a former transit cop shot eight men, killing two.)

The faggots, whose friends include the fairies, women who love women, and the queens, are kind, sweet, good-natured souls filled with empathy and compassion, while the men are corrupt, violent, mean-spirited villains who worship “papers” (money); there is no middle ground, no bad faggots, no admirable men. There is no nuance, too much telling and not enough showing, no dynamic flow or tension in the story and no growth in the characters despite there still being so much hate in America in 2025 amid the rollback of so many rights that were fought for, especially in the 1960s and ’70s.

Adapter and composer Venables and director Huffman, who previously collaborated on such projects as 4.48 Psychosis, Denis & Katya, We Are the Lucky Ones, and My Favourite Piece Is the Goldberg Variations, essentially remain faithful to the book, but what might work on the page falls flat on the stage, and the changes, including repeating phrases, are too didactic, preaching to the choir, overselling the points that are being made, as in the following missive, which was adjusted slightly from Mitchell’s original:

“They attacked anyone unlike them. / After the men triumphed, all that was other from them was considered inferior / and therefore worthy only of abuse and contempt and extinction. / The men decided who was to be hated: / those without cocks, / those whose skin didn’t match their own, / those who were hungry involuntarily, / those who came from other lands, / those who refused to be over-worked, / those who loved their own kind. / These are the ones the men decided to hate.”

They also cut out the characters in the book, such as Heavenly Blue, Loose Tomato, Mildred Munich, Pat, Lee, and Meredith, instead giving us nameless people we know nothing about — except for Green, who delivers a moving, fourth-wall-breaking improvisatory monologue about herself that is cut short by an extended singalong of a difficult melody with pedantic lyrics.

On opening night, there were noticeably few bursts of spontaneous applause from the audience, and there was only a scattered standing ovation at the end, even though it’s become de rigueur for everyone to get up and cheer. In fact, at one point in the show, Green actually told the audience to clap.

That’s never a good sign, particularly when you have the excited crowd already on your side from the very start.

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

TICKET GIVEAWAY: CANDACE BUSHNELL’S TRUE TALES OF SEX, SUCCESS, AND SEX AND THE CITY

Candace Bushnell is back for a special encore presentation of her one-woman show about her life and career (photo by Joan Marcus)

CANDACE BUSHNELL: TRUE TALES OF SEX, SUCCESS, AND SEX AND THE CITY
Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 West Sixty-Fourth St. & Central Park West
Friday, December 5, $34.45- $56.06 ($187.34 for VIP meet-and-greet), 8:00
ethical.nyc
candacebushnell.com

In December 2021, Candace Bushnell presented her one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City?, at the Daryl Roth Theatre, an endearing production in which Bushnell shared intimate details of her life and career, centering around the gargantuan success she has had with the creation of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the fictional characters on the HBO smash Sex and the City, based on her series of columns and 1996 book of the same name. The run was unfortunately cut short after Bushnell contracted Covid.

I called the play “a fab treat, a funny and candid New York story that everyone can relate to in one way or another, whether you are a fan of Sex and the City or have never watched or read it.”

Bushnell, who has also written such novels as Killing Monica, Lipstick Jungle, and Rules for Being a Girl (with Katie Cotugno), is now touring the show, renamed True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City; in the spring, she’ll be taking it to Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and California.

But first, the solo play is returning to New York City, where it all happened.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Bushnell, who is celebrating a birthday today (December 1), will be at Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on December 5 at 8:00 for a special one-night-only performance of True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City, and she has gifted twi-ny with a pair of prime tickets to give away for free to see the “real life Carrie Bradshaw.” Just send your name, phone number, and favorite Sex and the City character to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, December 3, at noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; one winner will be selected at random.

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