this week in theater

A DEATH-DEFYING ESCAPE!

Kevin Scott Allen, Judy Carter, and Lyndsi LaRose play multiple characters in A Death-Defying Escape! (photo by Jenny Graham)

Who: Judy Carter, Kevin Scott Allen, Lyndsi LaRose
What: Autobiographical streaming play A Death-Defying Escape!
Where: Hudson Guild Theatre online
When: Saturday, May 14, 11:00 pm, and Sunday, May 15, 6:00 pm, $25
Why: “When I was a little girl, I just worshiped Harry Houdini — I mean, the greatest escape artist in the world,” actress, comedian, author, Jewish lesbian, and magician Judy Carter says at the beginning of her autobiographical show, A Death-Defying Escape! “But you know, well, lately I’ve been thinking, he escaped from a chair. I mean, try escaping from a Verizon contract, right? How about getting out of a new pair of Spanx — on a hot day. Or, how about escaping from the closet, in the ’80s. Ta-da!” A large Queen of Hearts card behind her, Carter lifts her hands in triumph to applause from the live audience at the Hudson Guild Theatre in Santa Monica.

Over the course of ninety minutes, Carter relates her life story, from not being able to speak well when she was young, putting on magic shows, getting confused about her sexuality, and not understanding why her baby sister, Marsha, was treated differently by her parents than she was. Marsha had cerebral palsy and was confined to a chair; it’s no wonder Carter found Houdini so intriguing. Carter portrays herself and Marsha, while Kevin Scott Allen and Lyndsi LaRose play all the other characters, including Carter’s mother and abusive father, her beloved grandmother, fellow magician Doug Henning, a sexist club owner, and Carter’s much younger girlfriend, Sammy.

Judy Carter takes a candid look at her life in autobiographical show (photo by Jenny Graham)

“Just like Houdini, my grandparents were both escape artists — they escaped from the anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe to come to America, to be free! America, where there is no anti-Semitism,” Carter explains. She mixes in fun magic with honest episodes from her past, told in an intimate, conversational style, warts and all. The DIY set is by Craig Dickens, who also created the illusions, with lighting by Matt Richter and sound and projections by Nick Foran, complete with home movies and photos from Carter’s childhood and appearances on The Merv Griffin Show and The Mike Douglas Show.

Carter gestures with nearly every sentence, as if her life were a dance of words. She’s best known for her magic and her inspirational talks; she’s written such books as The New Comedy Bible, The Message of You: Turn Your Life Story into a Money-Making Speaking Career, and The Homo Handbook, displaying her range. Directed by Lee Costello, A Death-Defying Escape! allows Carter to break free of the psychological and emotional chains that have bound her, winning everyone over with her infectious charm. There are only two more performances left, May 14 and 15; they’re available for livestreaming so you can check it out no matter where you are.

HANGMEN

Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen takes place primarily in a pub owned by a former executioner (photo by Joan Marcus)

HANGMEN
Golden Theatre
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 18, $59-$199
866-811-4111
hangmenbroadway.com

At the end of my review of the Royal Court Theatre/Atlantic Theater Company production of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, I wrote, “It’s not going to hang around forever — although a Broadway transfer would be most welcome — so book your tickets now.” The show has indeed made a terrifically executed transition to the Golden Theatre, where it will be holding its bitingly funny necktie party through June 18. Book your tickets now.

The story opens in 1963, in a prison cell where death-row inmate Hennessy (Josh Goulding), despite insisting on his innocence, is about to meet his fate courtesy of master hangman Harry Wade (David Threlfall), largely believed to be the second best executioner in the land, behind the far more famous Albert Pierrepoint (John Hodgkinson). Hennessy shouts, “He’s hanging an innocent man! They could’ve at least sent Pierrepoint!” Harry responds, “I’m just as good as bloody Pierrepoint!” Hennessy adds, “Hung by a rubbish hangman, oh that’s so me!”

Two years later, the death penalty has been abolished in Britain, and Harry runs a pub with his wife, Alice (Tracie Bennett), and their teenage daughter, Shirley (Gaby French). The bar’s regulars include the comic trio of Bill (Richard Hollis), Charlie (Ryan Pope), and the older, nearly deaf Arthur (John Horton), along with the more serious Inspector Fry (Jeremy Crutchley), who doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time on the job.

A creepy customer (Alfie Allen) menaces hangman Harry Wade (David Threlfall) in Broadway play (photo by Joan Marcus)

When Clegg (Owen Campbell), a young journalist, enters the bar seeking to interview Harry about the law change, Harry explains, “One thing I’ve always prided myself on, for right or for wrong, I’m not saying I’m a special man, but one thing I’ve prided myself on is that, on the subject of hanging, I’ve always chosen to keep me own counsel. I’ve always chosen not to say a public word on this very private matter, and why have I chosen to do that you may ask? . . . For the past twenty-five years now I’ve been a servant of the Crown in the capacity of hangman. ‘A What of the Crown?’ Did you say? ‘A spokesman for the Crown’? . . . When was the last time you heard a servant making speeches…?” Then Clegg has the temerity to mention that he will also be speaking with Pierrepoint, so, unable to resist the spirit of competition, Harry quickly hauls the scribe upstairs, where he spills all sorts of beans.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Mooney (Alfie Allen) has quietly entered the bar, a menacing sort who takes a shine to Shirley. Mooney is later joined by Syd (Andy Nyman), Harry’s former assistant, who appears to have a bone to pick. When Shirley goes missing, Harry throws the law of the Crown out the window in a desperate effort to find her.

Syd (Andy Nyman) has some information for his old boss (David Threlfall) in Hangmen (photo by Joan Marcus)

Despite the formidable subject matter, Hangmen is a rip-roaring, gut-bustingly dark comedic yarn from master author McDonagh, who has won an Oscar and three Oliviers and has been nominated for four Tonys; he has written such other plays as The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Pillowman, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane and such films as In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. He and director Matthew Dunster (The Lightning Child, Mogadishu) haven’t gussied things up for Broadway; the production is just as sharp, just as thoroughly satisfying as the off-Broadway version, with the same set and costumes by Anna Fleischle, lighting by Joshua Carr, and sound by Ian Dickinson.

Everything I said of that previous staging holds true for this one; the only difference is that about half the cast has changed. The marvelous Threlfall (Nicholas Nickleby, Frank Gallagher in the original British version of Shameless) takes over for Mark Addy and immediately owns the role of Harry, his moustache and bow tie reminiscent of Hercule Poirot, though he is not nearly so clever and more than a bit buffoonish. Also new — and excellent — is Allen (The Spoils, Equus), best known as the whimpering Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones. When Syd refers to Mooney as “a creepy-looking fella,” Mooney insists that he’s “menacing.” He’s both.

As I noted in my previous review, Hangmen is loosely inspired by the exploits of the real-life Harry Allen, an English hangman who at first assisted Pierrepoint (the subject of the 2005 biopic Pierrepoint — The Last Hangman) and later, as chief executioner, hanged a man named James Hanratty who professed his innocence to the very end.

Amid all the jokes, the play does make key points about the death penalty, which is currently legal in twenty-seven states. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in America, “186 people have been exonerated and released from death row since 1973.” There’s no figure on exactly how many innocent people have been executed. And that’s no laughing matter.

iNEGRO, A RHAPSODY

Kareem M. Lucas confesses his sins and reveals those of others in new solo show iNegro, a Rhapsody, (photo by Russ Rowland)

iNEGRO, A RHAPSODY
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Through May 14, $25-$75
newohiotheatre.org
www.kareemmlucas.com

There are only a few more chances to catch Kareem M. Lucas’s one-man Afro-surrealist show, iNegro, a Rhapsody, which continues through May 14 at New Ohio Theatre. In the fifty-minute production, part of New Ohio and IRT Theater’s Archive Residency, Lucas confesses his sins and shares his thoughts on the world. “I want to write something so Black that God can’t ignore me,” he explains. As he delves into Disney, religion, race, class, family, and other topics, he is tied to a cross. The concept is by Obie winner Stevie Walker-Webb (The Folks at Home, one in two), with direction by Zoey Martinson (Skype Duet, Gutting) and an original jazz score and sound design by multi-instrumentalist Mauricio Escamilla (aka MOWRI). The set, which evokes a three-dimensional Kehinde Wiley painting, is by David Goldstein, with lighting by Josh Martinez-Davis and costume design by Tyler Arnold. The name of the play recalls both Rubin Goldmark’s 1922 orchestral work for the New York Philharmonic, A Negro Rhapsody, and the title of the 2016 James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

Told in seven movements, iNegro, a Rhapsody is the first part of Lucas’s “3 Ages of a Negro” trilogy; his previous solo shows include Black Is Beautiful, But It Ain’t Always Pretty; Rated Black: An American Requiem; From Brooklyn with Love; A Boy & His Bow; and A Warm Winter. The Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based Lucas has dedicated the world premiere of iNegro to the memory of the late Craig muMs Grant, the well-respected poet and actor who appeared in such television series as Oz and Boston Legal and such films as No Sudden Move and The Price; muMs, who was Lucas’s mentor on the piece — then known as The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro when they were working on it at Cherry Lane Theater’s Mentor Project — passed away in March 2021 at the age of fifty-two.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is facing an early closing notice at the Booth Theatre (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 5, $49 – $225
forcoloredgirlsbway.com

As I write this, there is a movement afoot to prevent the first Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf from closing early; the show opened April 20 to good reviews and was scheduled to run through August 14, but it was announced a few days ago that it would be leaving the Booth after the May 22 matinee. To help fill seats and keep the choreopoem, in which seven women share intimate stories of misogyny, abuse, and their retaking of power, from shutting its doors, journalists, artists, and theater bigs (Ayanna Prescod, Bebe Neuwirth, Mickalene Thomas, Chita Rivera, Lorin Latarro) have been sponsoring free ticket giveaways to lift the current average attendance, which is barely half capacity. The night I saw it, the audience seemed much larger than that and loved every second of the play, built around a series of monologues with music and dance in between. [ed. note: The show has now been extended through June 5.]

Director Leah C. Gardiner and choreographer Camille A. Brown collaborated on a sensational 2019 revival at the Public, where the original production moved in 1976 after earlier iterations at smaller venues in Berkeley and downtown New York (and shortly before moving to Broadway). Toni-Leslie James’s ravishing costumes featured multiple images of the face of each actor’s most beloved female relative, honoring the ancestors; Myung Hee Cho’s inclusive set was highlighted by three rows of chairs for audience members along the back arch of the circular stage, in front of a large mirror, which reflected the rest of the audience so they appeared right behind the cast; and Jiyoun Chang’s bright lighting often illuminated everyone in the theater. The show has been reimagined and reinvented for the Booth, unfortunately not for the better, but Shange’s striking words are as sharp as ever.

It all begins with a voice-over from Obie-winning, Oscar-nominated poet, novelist, playwright, kids’ book author, activist, and essayist Shange herself — who portrayed Lady in Orange back in 1976 and updated the script in 2010 — offering, “Aunt mamie was a lil colored girl, Auntie Effie was a lil colored girl, Mama was a lil colored girl, you’re a lil colored girl . . . / Imagine . . . if we could get all of them to talk, what would they say? / Imagine all the stories we could tell about the funny looking lil colored girls, and the sophisticated lil colored girls, and the pretty lil colored girls . . . the ones just like you!”

Seven women share their heartbreaking and celebratory stories in Ntozake Shange’s powerful choreopoem (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Over the course of the next ninety minutes, Lady in Orange (Amara Granderson), Lady in Brown (Tendayi Kuumba), Lady in Red (Kenita R. Miller), Lady in Green (Okwui Okpokwasili), Lady in Blue (Stacey Sargeant), Lady in Purple (Alexandria Wailes), and Lady in Yellow (D. Woods) poignantly relate key moments from their lives, with such titles as “dark phrases,” “no assistance,” “latent rapist,” “abortion cycle #1,” and “i usedta live in the world.” (Okpokwasili and Wailes return from the Public; I saw three understudies: Treshelle Edmond as Lady in Purple, McKenzie Frye as Lady in Orange, and Alexis Sims as Lady in Green.)

Hee Cho’s set is now dominated by a half dozen screens on the left and right, on which Aaron Rhyne’s mostly abstract (and distracting) visuals are projected. Sarafina Bush’s costumes are contemporary street clothing, the colors not as boldly obvious. Chang’s lighting is more standard, and Justin Ellington’s sound is built for the music, which is by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby and tends toward light jazz and R&B. Brown is the director and the choreographer, the first Black woman to do both on Broadway since Katherine Dunham for her three-act revue in November 1955.

The Obie, Tony, and Bessie-winning Brown has choreographed for her own company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, as well as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and such Broadway shows as Choir Boy and Once on This Island; she also choreographed and codirected (with James Robinson) the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Her style is rarely subtle, and that can work well in a dance presentation, but in for colored girls it quickly becomes overwhelming; instead of giving agency to the characters, it takes away from the narrative. Perhaps Gardiner was a calming influence; her deft touch is missing from this version.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is the first Broadway show to be directed and choreographed by a Black woman since 1955 (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

The cast is terrific, with an especially superb turn by the pregnant Miller, who thrillingly delivers “no assistance,” ending an affair with a lover (“this note is attached to a plant / i’ve been waterin since the day i met you / you may water it / yr damn self”), and “no more love poems #1” (“this is a requium for myself/ cuz I have died in a real way/ not wid aqua coffins & du-wop cadillacs/ i used to joke abt when i waz messin round / but a real dead lovin is here for you now/ cuz i dont know anymore/ how to avoid my own face wet wit my tears/ cuz i had convinced myself colored girls had no right to sorrow”).

The centerpiece is Lady in Green’s “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff,” in which she fights for her own being, for who she is and what is hers. She declares, “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff / not my poems or a dance I gave up in the street / but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff / like a kleptomanic working hard & forgettin while stealing / this is mines / this aint yr stuff / now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self.”

Despite the shortcomings of this production, for colored girls deserves a longer life on Broadway, telling an important story that particularly needs to be heard as Roe v. Wade is under fire and a woman’s right to her own body is threatened by a white patriarchy trying desperately to hold on to its fading power. It’s a truly American story; the characters hail from outside Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, L.A., and Newark, cities that have faced racial violence. It seems clear they’ve had enough and that the lives of women, and specifically women of color, would be different if they were in charge.

WEDDING BAND: A LOVE/HATE STORY IN BLACK AND WHITE

Brittany Bradford is sensational as a Black woman in love with a white man in Alice Childress’s Wedding Band (photo by Henry Grossman)

WEDDING BAND: A LOVE/HATE STORY IN BLACK AND WHITE
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 15, $90-$125
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

Alice Childress is finally having her moment. Born in South Carolina in 1916 and raised in Harlem, the playwright, actress, columnist, and novelist made her posthumous Broadway debut last fall with Trouble in Mind, which was heading for the Great White Way in 1957 until producers pulled it after Childress would not make any changes. A rare revival of her 1966 play, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, opens tonight at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. While it’s exciting to see Childress at last receive acclaim, both productions turned out to be disappointing.

The back story as to why these plays had nearly disappeared is primarily that Childress ultimately stood by her scripts, refusing to touch a single word. However, after having now seen both of them, I’m of the belief that each could have used at least a little revision in certain places to avoid repetition and overwrought melodrama; Childress is a master at building characters, but too many of her scenes languish. You can read my take on Trouble in Mind here; my thoughts on Wedding Band continue below.

First staged at the New York Shakespeare Public Theater in 1972 (and not seen again in the city till now), codirected by Joseph Papp and Childress (Papp initially insisted that the author direct but he stepped in, giving them both credit) and starring Ruby Dee and James Broderick (with Albert Hall, Polly Holliday, and Clarice Taylor), Wedding Band centers on the controversial relationship between a Black seamstress, Julia Augustine (Brittany Bradford), and her partner of ten years, a white baker named Herman (Thomas Sadoski). Julia has to move around a lot to avoid the racism the two of them encounter when their situation becomes known, no matter how careful they try to hide it.

It’s the summer of 1918, just a few months till the end of WWI and a year before Red Summer, during which white mobs of civilians and veterans attacked Blacks in twenty-six cities, at least in part because of the Great Migration. Julia has rented a small house in a tiny community for Blacks on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, run by Fanny Johnson (Elizabeth Van Dyke), a faux-elegant landlord who keeps a close watch on her handful of down-on-their-luck tenants.

TFANA’s Wedding Band features a gorgeous open set (photo by Hollis King)

Jason Ardizzone-West’s gorgeous set is a long, open rectangular space with a bed and night table at one end leading to a dirt path flanked by rows of tallgrass; the audience sits on opposite sides behind the knee-high grass. There are no actual doors, so all the characters can see one another whenever they are onstage, entering through the aisles, or wandering across the upper levels of the theater. Stacey Derosier’s lighting keeps most of the audience at least partially illuminated at all times, and Rena Anakwe’s sound design immerses the small crowd in the goings-on. It’s a powerful effect, particularly since the audience members are predominantly white and wearing masks, while onstage the 1918 influenza pandemic is raging across the country.

Among those at Mrs. Johnson’s establishment are Mattie (Brittany-Laurelle), a candy maker who is waiting for her husband, October, to come back from the Merchant Marine with much-needed funds, and their delightful eight-year-old daughter, Teeta (Phoenix Noelle), who plays with the white girl, aptly named Princess (Sofie Nesanelis), whom Mattie cares for; and the widowed Lula Green (Rosalyn Coleman), whose adopted son, Nelson (Renrick Palmer), is home from the war to march in a parade and chase down some women.

When Julia first arrives, she begs for peace and quiet, but Mrs. Johnson and the other residents want to find out everything about her, thumping the Bible as they seek out her sins. Childress points out their poverty from the very beginning; Teeta has lost something, and Mattie is desperate to find it. “Gawd, what’ve I done to be treated this way! You gon’ get a whippin’ too,” Mattie tells her. She explains to Mrs. Johnson, “Dammit, this gal done lost the only quarter I got to my name.”

Julia introduces herself to her new, nosy neighbors, who are taken aback when she quickly reaches into her purse and gives Teeta twenty-five cents. A few moments later the Bell Man (Max Woertendyke) shows up with his traveling salesman’s suitcase of random items; Lula owes him three dollars and ten cents but can’t pay anything now. Julia asks if he has any sheets, and soon the Bell Man, who recognizes her and knows that she is with a white man, is sitting on her bed, implying that she should fulfill his needs if she wants him to remain silent.

She throws him out, saying to the others, “I hate those kind-a people.” Lula responds, “You mustn’t hate white folks. Don’tcha believe in Jesus? He’s white.” Julia replies, “I wonder if he believes in me.”

When her lover, Herman, shows up, Julia is excited to see him. He’s upset because his mother (Veanne Cox) and sister, Annabelle (Rebecca Haden), are being harassed because they’re German, even though they’re American citizens. “It’s the war. Makes people mean,” Julia, who is always understanding of everyone, says. But Herman knows the truth about his family. “A poor ignorant woman who is mad because she was born a sharecropper . . . outta her mind ’cause she ain’t high class society. We’re red-neck crackers, I told her, that’s what.”

When Herman falls ill, it’s not as easy as simply calling a doctor, for their interracial relationship, in an era of anti-miscegenation laws, complicates everyone’s situation.

Bradford (Fefu and Her Friends, Bernhardt/Hamlet, Mac Beth) is spellbinding as Julia, her every move filled with the constant heavy weight on her heart. She portrays her with a gentle compassion until she explodes during Julia’s unforgettable confrontation with Herman’s racist mother.

Herman (Thomas Sadoski) battles illness as his sister (Rebecca Haden), mother (Veanne Cox), and longtime partner (Brittany Bradford) look on (photo by Hollis King)

The stage setup allows every audience member to follow Bradford’s riveting eyes, depicting the pain of being an independent-thinking Black woman in love with a white man, a relationship that nearly everyone looks down on. It takes on additional meaning as privacy rights are under attack again in the United States in 2022.

The rest of the cast is solid, but director Awoye Timpo (In Old Age, The Loophole, Carnaval), who so smoothly guided the show through the first half, gets too caught up in the mawkishness of the later plot developments, leading to a head-scratching magic-realist finale that feels as tacked on as it is.

Wedding Band is part of TFANA’s CLASSIX residency, which was founded by Timpo with Bradford, A. J. Muhammad, Dominique Rider, and Arminda Thomas to focus on Black performance and works by Black writers across the African diaspora. On May 14 at 4:30, TFANA will host the panel discussion “CLASSIX: In Search of Alice Childress,” with the CLASSIC collective, moderated by Jonathan Kalb. And on May 15 at 4:30, the TFANA Talk “Reflections, with Bianca Vivion Brooks” pairs Bradford with Juliana Canfield, who starred in Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box at TFANA in 2018, a show that also deals with interracial relationships.

I hope to see more plays by Childress, who died in New York City in 1994 at the age of eighty-one and also wrote such novels as A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich, Like One of the Family, and A Short Walk. Even in productions that fall short, there are compelling, prescient moments and important, beautifully drawn characters.

As she wrote in a letter to Dee, “Wedding Band is about yesterday and today . . . far away and right at hand . . . old and ever present. It is the past, present, and future . . . recollection, attention, and anticipation . . . It is about the humiliation of an entire nation . . . not a tale of star-crossed lovers. My play is about manless women. Women in need of love, name, protection. It concerns itself with love and the seeking of love in a racist society . . . the love of country, the love of material things, and spiritual love.” Childress is clearly a playwright for these troubled times.

RemarkaBULL PODVERSATION: EXPLORING LADY MACBETH WITH ISMENIA MENDES

Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) reaches out to her royal husband (Isabelle Fuhrman) in inventive reimagining of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

Who: Ismenia Mendes, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Livestreamed conversation about Lady Macbeth
Where: Red Bull Theater online
When: Monday, May 9, free with advance RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: Macbeth is all the rage now, with a much-derided version starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga currently playing at the Longacre on Broadway and Joel Coen’s film version with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand having garnered three Oscar nominations. One of the best and most innovative adaptations in decades was staged by Red Bull Theater at the Lucille Lortel in 2019, directed by Erica Schmidt and set at a girls school. The fierce and furious, sexy and sinister ninety minutes starred Isabelle Fuhrman as Macbeth and Ismenia Mendes as Lady Macbeth.

In conjunction with the streaming release of the 2019 production, available on demand May 16-29, Red Bull is hosting its latest RemarkaBULL Podversation, “Exploring Lady Macbeth,” with Mendes (Troilus and Cressida, Henry V) and associate artistic director and host Nathan Winkelstein performing the “How now! what news?” scene, followed by a discussion and an audience Q&A. In the dastardly dialogue, Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “What beast was’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And, to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place / Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: / They have made themselves, and that their fitness now / Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.” Previous RemarkaBULL Podversations, which are always a treat, have featured Kate Burton, André De Shields, Elizabeth Marvel, Chukwudi Iwuji, Patrick Page, Lily Rabe, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Urie, and others and can be viewed for free here.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

Jamie Lloyd’s reimagining of Cyrano de Bergerac continues at BAM through May 22 (photo by Marc Brenner)

CYRANO DE BERGERAC
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Strong, Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 22, $45-$310
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/cyrano

Jamie Lloyd reimagines Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac for the twenty-first century in his electrifying, Olivier-winning production that continues tearing down the house at the BAM Harvey through May 22.

As the play opens and a swarm of young people in contemporary street clothes congregate on a stark white stage, one man sits in a chair with his back to the audience, gazing into a mirror as if he can’t look away. We know it’s James McAvoy, the gorgeous Scottish superstar, portraying nobleman, soldier, and poet Cyrano de Bergerac sans the character’s famously large and ugly proboscis. But still, when he finally turns around, there’s an audible gasp from the audience; McAvoy, in tight-fitting black jeans, boots, and jacket, is even hotter than we imagined. If he has a problem with the way he looks, what does that say about the rest of us?

However, Ligniere (Nima Taleghani) declares, “The Parisian isn’t superior / just everyone else is inferior.” Thus, director Lloyd and translator and adaptor Martin Crimp are leveling the playing field from the start; we all have things about ourselves that we think are ugly, on the surface and/or inside.

Meanwhile, university student Roxane (Evelyn Miller) demands to be recognized as more than just a pretty face, insisting on being respected for her brains more than her beauty, although she has fallen head-over-heels for the simpleton Christian (Eben Figueiredo), who is most definitely not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Roxane is not always portrayed as a strong, intelligent character who exists outside of her cousin, Cyrano, and Christian, but she is very much her own woman here. “I am so, so bored with not being taken seriously by men,” she says.

Rostand’s 1897 original is a tribute to the power and glory of speech and the written word; Lloyd and Crimp now further that to the spoken word via rap, as if Cyrano is taking place in a hip-hop battle straight out of Eminem’s 8 Mile. “They say when he came through his mother’s vagina / his nose poked out first as a painful reminder / of all the agony to come,” one character explains.

Roxane (Evelyn Miller) and Cyrano (James McAvoy) enjoy a rare laugh together in electrifying adaptation at BAM (photo by Marc Brenner)

“When you first see it you say to yourself NO! ―/ that is a party-trick ― take it off, Cyrano,” the poet and pastry chef Ragueneau (Michele Austin) says about the nose. “You expect him to reach up and somehow unscrew it. / But the damage is done: He can never undo it.” Ragueneau, played by a woman in this version, is Roxane’s best friend and regular companion.

Cyrano is madly in love with Roxane, who is being unsuccessfully set up by the villainous De Guiche (Tom Edden) to wed the young nobleman Valvert and thereafter be shared with De Guiche, who sends Cyrano and Christian off to a military conflict they might not return from. Cyrano himself declares, “If style points you in a sexual direction / You might want to refer, Valvert, to my nasal erection.”

Through all its iterations, including the 1950 film with José Ferrer, the 1987 rom-com with Steve Martin, and the 2019 theater musical (and later film) with Peter Dinklage, Cyrano is about the unrequited love of a lover of language who has to hide behind his ugly facade to help another man capture the heart of a not necessarily strong-willed, self-capable woman he believes he is destined to be with.

Lloyd (Betrayal, Three Days of Rain), who presented a more traditional Cyrano for Roundabout in 2012, complete with a balcony scene and Douglas Hodge wearing a fake nose, this time has streamlined the visuals. Soutra Gilmour’s set is a big white box in which stairs move in and out, with overhead fluorescent lights creating haunting shadows. (Gilmour also designed the costumes; the lighting is by Jon Clark, with music and sound by Ben and Max Ringham.) Instead of parrying with their swords, characters fight it out with microphones, either attached to their head, held in their hand, or on a stand.

A beatboxer (Vaneeka Dadhria) serves as a kind of narrator throughout, but the rapping, which can be thrilling, gets to be too much. Like Cyrano, Rostand is a master wordsmith with an infectious love of the lexicon, which doesn’t always come through, even when the phrase “I love words, that’s all,” is projected onto the back wall. The play works significantly better when it slows down and focuses on the relationships, when the music stops and the tension between Cyrano, Roxane, Christian, De Guiche, and Ragueneau takes center stage (although one intimate scene with Cyrano and Christian goes wildly awry).

McAvoy (The Ruling Class, The Last King of Scotland), in a role previously performed by Martin, Ferrer, Hodge, Ralph Richardson, Derek Jacobi, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer, Gérard Depardieu, and Kevin Kline, among others over the last century-plus, sizzles as Cyrano; he dominates the Harvey with a magnetic power, his intense sensuality increasing with his every move. Miller (Flowers in the Attic, Jane Eyre) brings depth and a fierce perceptiveness to Roxane, although it is never clear why such a strong, brave woman is enraptured with the dimwitted Christian, who is no hot hunk, but that is all part of Lloyd’s twisting of expectations.

And in the end, like most of us, despite Cyrano’s romance with language itself, he is at a loss of words when expressing his desire for Roxane. He stumbles, “I’m speechless, speechless, all I can say is I want — I want — I want — there is no poetry — there is no structure that can make any sense of this — only I want — I want — I want — I want you.” It’s that passion that drives Lloyd’s unique reinterpretation of a classic.