this week in theater

soft

Donja R. Love’s soft takes place in a juvenile correction center (photo © Daniel J. Vasquez)

soft
Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater, the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West 52nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $39-$68
mcctheater.org/tix/soft

As Donja R. Love’s gorgeous, hard-hitting soft began, I couldn’t help but notice that the crowd at MCC’s Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater was about eighty percent Black and brown, which thrilled me, a white cis male. For the last ten years, I have been closely observing the racial makeup of New York City audiences, particularly as the breakthrough success of so many Black and brown playwrights and directors is helping theater become more diverse. In such works as David Harris’s Tambo & Bones, Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’, and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Fairview, the fourth wall gets shattered as the characters acknowledge and confront, in serious and/or comic ways, what is most often a significantly majority white audience.

Love’s play transpires over the course of a semester in a classroom in a correctional center for juveniles, offering them the opportunity to excel in schoolwork and avoid going to prison. Mr. Isaiah (Biko Eisen-Martin) is the caring teacher, determined to help his students thrive. Antoine (Dharon Jones), Dee (Essence Lotus), Bashir (Travis Raeburn), Kevin (Shakur Tolliver), Jamal (Dario Vazquez), and Eddie (Ed Ventura) are realistic Black, Afro-Latino, and Dominican teenagers dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, homophobia, poverty, systemic racism, and other societal ills. Mr. Cartwright (Leon Addison Brown) is the no-nonsense superintendent who advises Mr. Isaiah not to get too involved with the kids.

Mr. Isaiah is returning their papers on Othello, noting that several students are improving by being tutored by Kevin. Antoine gets lost in his drawings — “I’m Picasso out this bitch,” he tells Mr. Isaiah — while Eddie sleeps in the back and Bashir gets angry at just about everything. Jamal is disappointed when he doesn’t get the highest grade on the essay; that honor belongs to Kevin, who brags, “I’m so smart my genius transcends. Like, I prolli analyzed Othello better than Shakespeare dead ass could ever analyze Othello.”

When Mr. Isaiah asks Mr. Cartwright for new textbooks to replace the dilapidated old ones, even suggesting to dig into his own salary to afford them, the latter explains, “I’ve seen your paychecks. So no pay cuts for you, kid. Look, I know we call this place a juvenile boarding school to try and get whatever grants we can but don’t be fooled; this is a correctional center that houses delinquents. . . . Just like you are now, every teacher here, at some point, was . . . hopeful. But hope, Isaiah, can be a very dangerous thing if you let it. It can blind you from reality. You can get lost in hope.”

That sense of hope changes dramatically after one of the students commits suicide, causing the others to reevaluate who they are and where they are going in life as Mr. Isaiah desperately attempts to hold it all together, for him and them.

Mr. Cartwright (Leon Addison Brown) and Mr. Isaiah (Biko Eisen-Martin) have a difference of opinion in marvelous play at MCC (photo © Daniel J. Vasquez)

The play is beautifully directed by Whitney White (On Sugarland, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord), allowing each character to develop at their own pace and making room for Love’s poetic language to build organically; at times it is choreographed like a dance, with aggressive movement juxtaposed with tender moments. The cast is exceptional, from the six young students to the steadfast Eisen-Martin (In the Southern Breeze, Strange Courtesies) and the unshakable Addison Brown (“Master Harold” . . . and the boys, The Train Driver).

Adam Rigg’s set is a horizontal classroom, with the audience sitting in three rows of seats facing each other across the two long, open sides. This is the third play this year I’ve seen that takes place in an open-sided classroom, all exploring racial and ethnic identity and broken-down systems: Sanaz Toossi’s English deals with four Iranians learning English for various reasons, while Dave Harris’s Exception to the Rule is a Beckett-esque twist on The Breakfast Club as six Black teenagers are trapped in detention.

In soft, flowers separate the stage from the seats, as if a barrier of love, inspired by Kehinde Wiley’s series of paintings of young Black men stretched out on beds and couches, surrounded by colorful flowers on the wallpaper and sheets and floating through the air (Femme Piquée par un Serpent II, The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia). Love writes in the script, “They stretch as far as the eyes can see. It’s all we see. We should get so lost in their beauty that we forget this is a play. Until . . . Flower petals start to fall from the sky.”

Cha See’s lighting allows everyone to see each other in the theater, which in a play such as soft is an added bonus, especially the night I went, when there was a clear divergence between the white and Black/brown audience members; the latter were vocal in response to numerous sharp lines and powerful situations, calling out in agreement — or disagreement — and snapping when a character made an important point. When I saw MJ on Broadway, I was not happy that the family sitting behind me was munching away on noisy potato chips and talking throughout the first act, but what was happening at soft felt so right, so natural. I also knew that I should not participate in the snapping and vocalizing, that it was definitely not my place. (The sound is by Germán Martínez, with original music by Mauricio Escamilla.)

Mr. Isaiah (Biko Eisen-Martin) and Bashir (Travis Raeburn) don’t always see eye to eye in soft (photo © Daniel J. Vasquez)

That feeling was increased during a fourth-wall-breaking magic-realism coda in which the racial makeup of the audience was made central and magnified. It was only during the postshow talkback with White that I realized it was Black Theater Night; White pointed out that the coda is very different on other nights, when there are far fewer Black and brown people in the audience. The sense of exclusion of the white playgoers was made even more palpable when White explained that they should not speak during the discussion, should not ask a question or share their experience of the play. (The next Black and Brown Theater Night is June 17; the June 18 matinee will be followed by a mental health awareness conversation, and there will be a free Spoken Word Open Mic on June 18 at 5:30 addressing the question “What does softness mean to you?”)

It reminded me of an earlier work directed by White to which only Black and brown critics were invited because of the subject matter. It also brought me back to one of my most unforgettable nights at the theater, at the Flea in 2015, during the Bats’ participatory Take Care. Audience members were assigned varied actions, and I was given the task of telling all the Black and brown people in the audience to gather in a corner. You can only imagine how that went.

There’s a reckoning happening in theater, and it’s long overdue. I’m not about to complain about feeling excluded, given the shameful history of racial injustice and LGBTQIA+ discrimination in this country. I’m also not going to complain when the reparative work results in such marvelous and meaningful productions as soft, the title of which refers to the hope and joy, the basic humanity, that can be found even in hard times. Love, a queer Black Philadelphia native living and “thriving” with HIV, is a phenomenal playwright with his finger on the pulse of this transformation, as shown in such previous impressive works as one in two and Fireflies. I’m excited to see whatever Love and White do next, no matter how inclusive or exclusive it may be.

ULYSSES: ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE TAKES ON BLOOMSDAY

Elevator Repair Service will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Ulysses at Symphony Space on June 16

Who: Elevator Repair Service
What: Bloomsday on Broadway
Where: Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway at Ninety-Fifth St.
When: Thursday, June 16, $17-$28, 8:00
Why: Last year, walking on the Lower East Side, I bumped into Scott Shepherd, longtime member of Elevator Repair Service (ERS), which has been presenting unique, experimental theatrical works since 1991. I asked him what he was up to and he said, “Just wait to see what we’re doing for Bloomsday at Symphony Space.” That day has arrived. On June 16, in honor of the centennial of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, ERS will be doing something different at Symphony Space, which has been celebrating the novel for decades by having all-star marathon lineups reading the book on June 16, the day in 1904 in which the story takes place.

Helmed by ERS artistic director John Collins, the two-hour presentation features ERS ensemble members Shepherd, Dee Beasnael, Kate Benson, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, Christopher-Rashee Stevenson, and Stephanie Weeks performing excerpts from each of the book’s eighteen episodes, bringing the tale to life as only ERS can. ERS has previously brought its unpredictable style to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (the eight-hour Gatz), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (The Select). The set design is by dots, with costumes by Enver Chakartash, lighting by Mark Barton, sound by Ben Williams, and props by Patricia Marjorie. It all begins with “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” For more on the centenary of the novel, be sure to head over to the Morgan Library to see the new exhibit “One Hundred Years of James Joyce’s Ulysses.”

A STRANGE LOOP

Jaquel Spivey makes his Broadway debut in Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Strange Loop (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

A STRANGE LOOP
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $49 – $225
strangeloopmusical.com

In his 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop, Pulitzer Prize–winning scientist Douglas Hofstadter writes, “In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.” In her song “Strange Loop” from her seminal 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair sings, “The fire you like so much in me / Is the mark of someone adamantly free. . . . I can’t be trusted / They’re saying I can’t be true / But I only wanted more than I knew.”

Hofstadter and Phair are among those who served as major influences on Michael R. Jackson’s dazzling, Pulitzer Prize–winning musical, A Strange Loop, which is bringing down the house at the Lyceum on Broadway following an earlier run at Playwrights Horizons. As the show opens, the protagonist, Usher (Jaquel Spivey), is ushering the audience back to their seats for the second act of The Lion King, adding some unexpected bonus information: “In the background, there will be a young overweight-to-obese homosexual and/or gay and/or queer, cisgender male, able-bodied university-and-graduate-school educated, musical theater writing, Disney ushering, broke-ass middle-class politically homeless normie leftist black American descendant of slaves who thinks he’s probably a vers bottom . . . but not totally certain of that obsessing over the latest draft of his self-referential musical A Strange Loop! And surrounded by his extremely obnoxious Thoughts!” Usher later explains that his self-referential musical is “about a black, gay man writing a musical about a black, gay man who’s writing a musical about a black gay man, who’s writing a musical about a black gay man, etc.”

To bring the loop full circle, Jackson himself is a young overweight homosexual who has been obsessing over his self-referential musical, A Strange Loop, for nearly twenty years; it started off as a monologue in 2003, written when Jackson was working as an usher on Broadway for The Lion King and other Disney extravaganzas and listening to “dat-blasted white girl music” by Phair, Tori Amos, and Joni Mitchell.

Six thoughts come to colorful life at the Lyceum Theatre (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Usher’s never-ending fears and worries come to life in the form of six thoughts that roil around in his brain and comment on his decisions like a Greek chorus, including Supervisor of Your Sexual Ambivalence (L. Morgan Lee), Daily Self-Loathing (James Jackson Jr.), Head of Corporate Niggatry (Jason Veasey), and Financial Faggotry (Antwayn Hopper); it’s like a queer Black version of the 1990s cis white sitcom Herman’s Head, in which a young magazine employee’s thoughts of professional and romantic success are debated by four actors playing various parts of his psyche. The actors portraying Usher’s thoughts also take turns as his mother (John-Andrew Morrison), father (Veasey), agent (John-Michael Lyles), and various historical Black figures.

Usher is haunted by his consciousness, especially when he is given the opportunity to ghost write a gospel play for Tyler Perry. Usher feels that writing for Perry would compromise everything he believes in, calling Perry “toxic” and arguing, “The crap he puts on stage, film, and TV makes my bile wanna rise.” However, his thoughts and family want him to do it for the money and because “Tyler Perry writes real life” and “Tyler Perry loves his mama.” The guilt runs deep as Usher pursues both professional and personal opportunities, desperate to make himself seen and heard in a world that too often treats him as if he’s invisible, what he refers to as his “exile in Gayville.” Although not all of the details in the show are autobiographical, Jackson shares a lot in common with Usher, except now everyone knows who Jackson is.

A Strange Loop is stylishly directed by Stephen Brackett (Be More Chill, The Lightning Thief) with a balls-out sense of humor that is furthered by Raja Feather Kelly’s wickedly sly choreography, which has fun with Spivey, who is not your typical Broadway leading man. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set isolates Usher, making his loneliness palpable, while giving each Thought its own doorway, like the different compartments of the brain. Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes are highlighted by Usher’s red usher outfit, which is counteracted by his black T-shirt that includes such crossed-out words as “Imperialist” and “White Supremacist” above the clearly legible “bell hooks,” a tribute to the Black author and activist (Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America) who passed away in December 2021 at the age of sixty-nine.

The ninety-minute show looks and sounds terrific, with colorful lighting by Jen Schriever, vibrant sound by Drew Levy, music direction by Rona Siddiqui, and wonderful orchestrations by Charlie Rosen, played live by a six-piece band. In his Broadway debut, Spivey, taking over for Larry Owens, who played Usher in the off-Broadway production, is an utter delight. From the opening moments, when he declares, “Everyone, please return to your seats; the second act is about to begin!” to his later acknowledgment that “These are my memories / Sweet sour memories / This is my history / This is my mystery,” he has the audience firmly on his side. You don’t have to be a queer Black man to identify with Usher’s fears and desires, to understand his loneliness. Jackson has done a masterful job of making A Strange Loop an inclusive story while also challenging conceptions of what a Broadway musical can be; this is not The Lion King or Aladdin, and it is most certainly not for kids.

In Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Hofstadter writes, “The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself.” A Strange Loop works because it reflects on itself, and on all of us, in one way or another.

MJ THE MUSICAL

Myles Frost stars as the King of Pop in MJ the Musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

MJ THE MUSICAL
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West Fifty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 30, $84-$299
mjthemusical.com

The most important official line about MJ does not come from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s book or fifteen-time Grammy winner Michael Jackson’s lyrics; instead, it can be found on the title page of the Playbill: “By special arrangement with the Estate of Michael Jackson.”

The jukebox musical features a star turn by former Voice contestant Myles Frost as the King of Pop. The show opens at his Neverland Ranch as MJ is preparing for a world tour in support of his eighth solo album, 1992’s Dangerous. The extensive, exhausting rehearsals — Jackson is a perfectionist, making demands on the dancers and designers — are being documented by music journalist Rachel (Whitney Bashor) and cameraman Dave (Joey Sorge) for MTV, including occasional access to Jackson himself.

The plot quickly glosses over child abuse allegations — the LAPD would begin investigating Jackson in August 1993 — and has a brief scene dealing with his addiction to painkillers. (Jackson’s death in June 2009 at the age of fifty was attributed in large part to his overdependence on prescription medication.)

The main conflict, and it’s a big stretch, is whether Jackson is willing to put Neverland up for collateral in exchange for a loan that will pay for his spectacular entrance sequence at the start of his concerts. It’s a paper-thin narrative even as we root for Jackson not to lose his beloved home, where many of the alleged abuses purportedly took place. More time is given to talk of his Heal the World Foundation, a charity to help disadvantaged children, than to any accusations. Although one certainly gets invested in seeing just how close the company comes to re-creating Jackson’s songs and movement, that can’t sustain a 150-minute show (with intermission).

Director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon cuts between rehearsals and key scenes from Jackson’s childhood in the Jackson Five, with the young Michael (Walter Russell III, Christian Wilson, Tavon Olds-Sample) joined by his brothers Marlon (Devin Trey Campbell, Zelig Williams), Jermaine (Lamont Walker II), Tito (Apollo Levine), Randy (Raymond Baynard), and Jackie (John Edwards) as they are discovered and nurtured by Motown founder Berry Gordy (Antoine L. Smith) and producer Quincy Jones (Levine) as parents Katherine (Ayana George) and, especially, the controlling Joe (Quentin Earl Darrington) carefully watch their career.

The songs are terrifically orchestrated and arranged by musical supervisor David Holcenberg and musical director Jason Michael Webb, regularly igniting the crowd. And what a setlist it is: “ABC,” “Bad,” “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” “Black or White,” “Dancing Machine,” “Man in the Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Thriller,” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” among others. The show is a tech success, with sets by Derek McLane, lighting by Natasha Katz, costumes by Paul Tazwell, sound by Gareth Owen, and projections by Peter Nigrini; Charles Lapointe does a great job with hair and wigs.

Darrington (Once on This Island, Ragtime) stands out doing double duty as tour manager Rob and Joe Jackson, as Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) and Tony winner Wheeldon (An American in Paris, Cinderella) make direct comparisons to the two men’s influences on Michael’s personal and professional lives and how they protect him. But it’s not enough to offset everything that is left out of the story, which looms over the production like a dark cloud.

In the song “Keep the Faith” from the Dangerous album, Jackson sings, “If you call out loud / Will it get inside / Through the heart of your surrender / To your alibis / And you can say the words / Like you understand / But the power’s in believing / So give yourself / A chance.” MJ the Musical feels like a chance for the Michael Jackson Estate to exploit those alibis without really looking at the man in the mirror.

AMERICAN BUFFALO

Sam Rockwell, Darren Criss, and Laurence Fishburne star in latest Broadway revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)

AMERICAN BUFFALO
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $79.50 – $299.50
americanbuffalonyc.com

In 1981, at the downtown Circle in the Square on Bleecker St., a high school classmate of mine named Rich and I saw David Mamet’s American Buffalo, a searing three-character drama starring Al Pacino, Clifton James, and Thomas G. Waites as a trio of luckless losers in a Chicago junk shop plotting a low-level heist. Last month, Rich and I saw the third Broadway revival of the play, at Circle in the Square in the Theater District, a still-sizzling play with another all-star cast: Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne, and Darren Criss.

A lot has changed over the last forty-one years. Rich and I both moved out of Long Island; he is a married insurance defense lawyer in Queens with two kids, while I’m a married culture writer and managing editor in Manhattan. Mamet, for decades celebrated as one of the country’s most important and talented playwrights and filmmakers — he’s been nominated for two Oscars, three Emmys, and two Tonys and won the Pulitzer Prize for 1983’s Glengarry Glen Ross — has now been turned into a pariah by the left because of his Trumpist political views and condemnation of liberalism, which dates back to around 2011, along with the toxic masculinity and misogyny that appear throughout his work.

The last decade has witnessed a quartet of disasters by Mamet — the oh-so-brief Broadway debuts of The Anarchist and China Doll, an ill-fated revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, and the world premiere of the disappointing The Penitent — but all of that has little to do with Neil Pepe’s powerful new staging of American Buffalo; my only quibble is that the intermission gets in the way of the flow of the drama, which is only eighty-five minutes without the break. (Most of Mamet’s works are between sixty and one hundred minutes, so he certainly has a way of getting right to the point.)

Donny (Laurence Fishburne) gets an earful from Teach (Sam Rockwell) in American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)

American Buffalo takes place in an impossibly crowded downstairs junk shop. It’s a Friday morning, and middle-aged store owner Donny Dubrow (Laurence Fishburne) is talking with Bobby (Darren Criss), a young simpleton who helps him out on occasion. In this case, Donny has asked Bobby to keep watch on a guy who had come into the store and purchased a buffalo nickel from him for ninety bucks. Donny compares the stranger to their friend Fletcher, who just won a stash playing cards.

“You take him and you put him down in some strange town with just a nickel in his pocket, and by nightfall he’ll have that town by the balls,” Donny says. “This is not talk, Bob, this is action. . . . Skill. Skill and talent and the balls to arrive at your own conclusions.”

While Donny goes out of his way to teach Bobby about life, their friend Walter Cole (Sam Rockwell), better known as Teach, isn’t seeking out any teaching moments. He whirls into the shop, complaining about this and that, finding offense in minor incidents, lashing out with a slew of curses as he recounts supposed wrongs done to him. “Someone is against me, that’s their problem,” he barks. “I can look out for myself, and I don’t got to fuck around behind somebody’s back, I don’t like the way they’re treating me. Or pray some brick safe falls and hits them on the head, they’re walking down the street. But to have that shithead turn, in one breath, every fucking sweetroll that I ever ate with them into GROUND GLASS — I’m wondering were they eating it and thinking ‘This guy’s an idiot to blow a fucking quarter on his friends‘’ . . . this hurts me, Don. This hurts me in a way I don’t know what the fuck to do.” When Donny tries to calm him down, the bloviator says, “The only way to teach these people is to kill them.”

Amid a series of Pinteresque discussions, each more absurd than the last as they talk about English muffins, bacon, the weather, coffee, cheating at cards, pigirons, and loyalty, they plot a heist, deciding to rid the buffalo nickel customer of all of his coins later that night. What could possibly go wrong?

American Buffalo is a character-driven masterpiece about low-level dreams gone awry, about people who started with nothing and have no idea how to get their piece of the pie, or at least not legally. It’s field day for three actors; past productions have featured such trios as Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan, and John Savage; William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, and Mark Webber; John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment; and Damian Lewis, John Goodman, and Tom Sturridge.

Daren Criss holds his own with big-timers Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne in Mamet revival (photo by Richard Termine)

The current Broadway revival, staunchly directed by Neil Pepe (Hands on a Hardbody, Dying for It), who has helmed many of Mamet’s works — including the 2000 revival at the Donmar Warehouse and the Atlantic Theater, which was cofounded by Mamet and Macy and where Pepe has been artistic director for thirty years — is another acting tour de force, with Criss (How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) sublime as the gentle Bobby, Fishburne (Two Trains Running, Riff Raff) steadfast as the straightforward Donny, and a mustachioed Rockwell (A Behanding in Spokane, Fool for Love) right on target as the unsettling, unpredictable Teach, his polyester slacks practically a character unto themselves. (The costumes are by Dede Ayite.)

Scott Pask’s set is like a character unto itself as well, consisting of hundreds of items cluttering the floor and filling the ceiling over the men’s heads; these pieces of junk are like parts of their brain, all the thoughts and desires swimming around their skulls, likely to never come to fruition, just taking up space in these ne’er-do-wells who can’t see clearly ahead of themselves.

Right before the show started, Rich reminded me that when he had taken a stab at acting and stand-up comedy after college, his go-to audition speech was from American Buffalo, Teach’s first words: “Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie.” After experiencing the play with him again after four decades, that choice made perfect sense to me.

JIM FLETCHER ON SCREEN

Jim Fletcher played Frankensteins monster in Tony Ourslers Imponderable (photo courtesy Museum of Modern Art)

Jim Fletcher plays Frankenstein’s monster in Tony Oursler’s Imponderable (photo courtesy Museum of Modern Art)

Who: Jim Fletcher
What: Film series
Where: Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave. at Second St.
When: June 11-16
Why: In a January 2020 twi-ny talk, actor, writer, and editor Jim Fletcher, who is beloved in the experimental theater scene, said of his working with such companies as the New York City Players (NYCP), the Wooster Group, and Elevator Repair Service, “I’m working with people I love. It seems I never asked myself what kind of work I wanted to do, and also never the follow-up question, who best to do it with. In that sense I’m not a productive person. I think when you get close to people, you spontaneously start working in some way . . . out of sheer energy or whatever it is. Surplus.” Fans of Fletcher’s stage work (Pollock, Isolde, Why Why Always) might not realize just how productive the deep-voiced actor is, but they can find out in the Anthology Film Archives series “Jim Fletcher On Screen,” running June 11-16.

The mini-festival consists of eight programs comprising sixteen shorts, documentaries, and features starring the tall, bold Fletcher, from Roland Ellis’s ten-minute Break Down, Nicholas Elliott’s Icarus, and Laura Parnes’s Blood and Guts in High School (an adaptation of the book by Kathy Acker) to Shaun Irons’s Standing By: Gatz Backstage (a behind-the-scenes look at the eight-hour Gatz), Zoe Beloff’s Glass House (based on an unrealized science fiction project by Sergei Eisenstein), and Ellen Cantor’s Pinochet Porn (an episodic narrative that was completed after her death). NYCP founder Richard Maxwell is represented with The Feud Other, The Darkness of This Reading, and Showcase, the latter promising, “Gradually getting dressed, [Fletcher’s character] discusses life on the road, memories, moron jokes, the conference he is attending, business strategies, and a pivotal deal that went down recently under intimate circumstances. He sings.” Yes, Fletcher sings!

The celebration of all things Fletcher concludes June 16 with visual artist Tony Oursler’s 3D Imponderable, which was the centerpiece of a MoMA exhibition in 2016-17 and in which Fletcher portrays his dream role, Frankenstein’s monster. Fletcher will be at Anthology to talk about his work at several screenings, bringing along some of his friends and colleagues. Be prepared to join the ever-growing Fletcher faithful; we are legion.

THE BEDWETTER

Zoe Glick is delightful as a young girl with an embarrassing problem in world premiere musical at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

THE BEDWETTER
Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $111.50 – $131.50
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

Sarah Silverman is a superhero comedian, actress, and activist, and the new musical The Bedwetter is her origin story — and it’s more fab than we could ever have hoped, no mere trickler.

In her 2010 memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee (HarperCollins, April 2010, $19.99), Silverman detailed how she dealt as a child with nocturnal enuresis, mixing comedy with heartfelt poignancy as she openly and honestly examined the shame she suffered through. While the world premiere musical, which opened Tuesday night at the Atlantic for a limited run through July 3, also has its tender, emotional moments, it’s mostly a jubilant, hysterically funny tale about a unique young girl (Zoe Glick) and her dysfunctional family as she begins fifth grade in a new school.

Sarah’s parents have recently divorced. Her severely depressed mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), spends all day and night in bed, watching her favorite movie and TV stars, never venturing outside. Sarah’s philandering father, Donald (Darren Goldstein), is the owner of Crazy Donny’s Discount Clothing Store and loves telling Sarah and her older sister, eighth grader Laura (Emily Zimmerman), dirty jokes utterly inappropriate for children. Meanwhile, Sarah’s beloved nana (Bebe Neuwirth) speaks without a filter, smokes like a fiend, and has Sarah regularly mix her Manhattans.

“I’m just really really fucking excited to be here!” Sarah cries out in class on her first day of school, angering her teacher, Mrs. Dembo (Ellyn Marie Marsh), who says, “Sarah! We don’t use language like that!” Sarah responds, “Sorry, Mrs. Dembo! I know that’s an ‘at home’ word.” Well, not at most suburban homes with young kids.

Sarah is a happy-go-lucky girl who manages to smile through all her family weirdness; she is ridiculously cute in her tight black bangs and shiny eyes. (The hair and wig design is by Tom Watson.) When she tries to make friends with a trio of mean girls — Ally (Charlotte Elizabeth Curtis), Abby (Charlotte MacLeod), and Amy (Margot Weintraub) — she has an unusual take on their verbal attacks on her.

“Your arms are so hairy!” Ally sings. “I couldn’t agree more! You should see my back!” Sarah responds. “Your teeth are enormous!” Abby declares. “I couldn’t agree more! To keep them this yellow takes extra plaque!” Sarah joyfully admits. “You’re short and dark and strange and eww-y!” the three girls say. “I know what you mean! I’m totally Jew-y!” Sarah replies with a big grin.

Sarah Silverman (Zoe Glick) and her father (Darren Goldstein) visit the doctor in The Bedwetter (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

At school, Laura prefers to ignore her little sister, but Sarah can’t help but stick around her. Laura explains, “Like do you know the type of person that like wants to smell all the bad smells? Like when the milk goes bad she’s like let me smell it and you say why would you want to and she says she just ‘wants to know’? Or like . . . do you know the type of person that’ll wake you up at 1 am and say, ‘Laura, does the pee come out the baby hole, or its own hole? . . . And how many holes do we have?’” To which Sarah says, “Yeah! And like, do you have a period hole now?”

But as with all superheroes, she has her own personal Kryptonite, in this case the severe shame of wetting the bed every night. When one of her worst nightmares comes true, Sarah’s father takes her to see a hypnotist, Dr. Grimm, then a pill-crazed screwball, Dr. Riley (both played by Rick Crom), but that only makes matters worse as she struggles, like any preteen, to fit in. She tries to find solace in her own superhero, Bedford native Jane Badler, aka Miss New Hampshire (Ashley Blanchet), who shows up at various times as a goddess of perfection, offering tidbits of wisdom in her beauty-pageant costume.

The Bedwetter is a sparkling adaptation of Silverman’s memoir, ready, willing, and able to pull no punches and hold nothing back. It might be about a ten-year-old, but it is most definitely not for kids; a group of children were sitting around us, and they looked rather uncomfortable through much of the show, particularly during Donald’s “In My Line of Work,” in which he proudly proclaims numerous times to several kids, “I fucked your mom!” It’s reminiscent of Silverman’s innovative cable sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010 and approached her life with a wicked sense of humor as she brilliantly, and often controversially, complete with ferociously funny cringe-worthy moments, faced such issues as racism, anti-Semitism, abortion, and same-sex marriage. (It was a family affair, as her older sister, Laura, portrayed her younger sister.)

A nontraditional musical that brings to mind Fun Home, The Bedwetter features a jaunty pop score by three-time Emmy and Grammy winner and Oscar and Tony nominee Adam Schlesinger (Cry-Baby, “That Thing You Do!”), a founding member of Fountains of Wayne (Utopia Parkway, “Stacy’s Mom”) who died of Covid-19 complications in April 2020 at the age of fifty-two; the playful lyrics, which toy with genre cliches and regularly go to unexpected places, are by Schlesinger and Silverman, set to perky orchestrations by David Chase.

Nana (Bebe Neuwirth) has some choice advice for Sarah (Zoe Glick) in rousing musical (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

But it’s the book that really glows, written by Silverman and Joshua Harmon, one of today’s best playwrights; his recent work includes the extraordinary epic Prayer for the French Republic, the dazzling black comedy Bad Jews, and the moving relationship drama Significant Other. Harmon and Silverman tell the story with charm, incorporating just the right amount of tsuris. And only Sarah Silverman could get away with saying, “Oh, John Lennon. This might sound weird, but your senseless murder has made one little girl very happy.” Bedwetting becomes instantly relatable, resonating with any shame anyone in the audience may be holding inside.

Obie-winning director Anne Kauffman (The Nether, Mary Jane) has a firm grasp of the unusual material, unfolding on Laura Jellinek’s graceful sets, which morph from bedrooms to school hallways to doctors offices. Byron Easley’s choreography nearly brings the house down in a number involving dancing pills.

Glick (Frozen, Les Misérables) is a delight as young Sarah, bursting with confidence in a challenging role; she’s actually fourteen, so it’s a little easier to accept many of the words and ideas that come out of her character’s mouth. Goldstein (The Little Foxes, Continuity) and Levy (Frozen, Caroline, or Change) make a fine pair of dueling exes, while Neuwirth (Chicago, Cheers) is like a queen holding court as Nana. Crom (Urinetown, Merrily We Roll Along) nearly steals the show as the doctors (among other minor roles) when Blanchet (Waitress, Beautiful) isn’t taking center stage as the cryptic Miss New Hampshire. [Ed. note: Jessica Vosk will play Beth Ann and Elizabeth Ward Land will take over the role of Nana from July 5 to 10.]

But mostly, The Bedwetter is about discovering and accepting who you are, making necessary changes as you grow, and becoming part of the world around you. As Phyllis Campbell (Marsh), Amy’s mother, says to the kids at her daughter’s birthday party, “May all your dreams come true! Mine did not!” In The Bedwetter, Silverman dares us to face our fears, and beat them silly.