this week in theater

HOOP DREAMS: FLEX / THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL

Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) and Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) face off against each other in Candrice Jones’s Flex (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

FLEX
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through August 20
www.lct.org/shows/flex

“Being a fan is like having a religion,” Matt says in Rajiv Joseph’s King James, a play that ran this spring at MTC at New York City Center about two Cleveland men who bond over their mutual love of hoops star LeBron James, perhaps the greatest player of all time.

Here in New York, basketball itself is a religion. Fans continue to worship the Knicks and pack Madison Square Garden even though the team has won only one playoff series in ten years and has not taken home a championship in half a century; the city went into mourning when former All-Star MVP center Willis Reed died this past March at the age of eighty. Across the East River, the Nets have been in turmoil since they moved to Brooklyn in 2012, going through superstars at the Barclays Center like Halloween candy, with nothing to show for it.

Meanwhile, for those paying attention, the other team at Barclays, the New York Liberty, is having its best season since the Women’s National Basketball Association started in 1997, in serious contention for its first league title.

Basketball lies at the heart of two current dramas in Manhattan, one worthy of a championship, the other, well, in need of significant rebuilding; both conclude their seasons on August 20.

At Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse, Candrice Jones’s Flex is a fast-paced and exciting play set in rural Arkansas in 1998, where five seventeen-year-old Black women on the team known as the Lady Train are preparing for their next big game. Shooting guard Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) is being scouted by major colleges. Point guard Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) is a ball hog jealous of the attention Sidney is getting. Power forward Cherise Howard (Ciara Monique) believes they all need to be cleansed and offers to baptize everyone. Center Donna Cunningham (Renita Lewis) is the most grounded and caring of the tight-knit group. And shooting guard April Jenkins (Brittany Bellizeare) is pregnant but wants to keep playing, despite the strong objections of coach Francine Pace (Christiana Clark).

Matt Saunders’s primary set consists of half a court, with the rim affixed on the top of a barn garage. The floor is actually parquet but we’re told it’s dirt. At the beginning, all five players appear to be with child, but following practice, four of them take out fake pregnant belly prosthetics. It’s a funny moment that instantly shows their camaraderie and support for one another.

The narrative is divided into four quarters, just like a basketball game. The cast displays its skills right from the opening tip-off, getting into a rhythm. “My first buzzer beater ever! / I finally know I’m just as good as you! / No more Plainnole, Arkansas, dirt courts for me, Mama! / No more dust in my eyes, my ankles, my fingernails. / I’m gonna win regionals, then state,” Starra says to her late mother, who gave up bball for the army. “Ain’t no way you gonna believe this. / But, scouts are coming here, to Plainnole. / You said by the time I got older. / There’d be a girls’ NBA. / You were right. / I’m going to the WNBA.”

Starra’s selfishness leads to major problems when the teammates hang out one night at Sidney’s house, discussing Michael Jordan, sexual abuse, abortion, condoms, and boxers vs. briefs. Soon they’re in an ingeniously designed car, singing Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” each of them highlighting individual lines that are particularly meaningful, which include “I’ve been holdin’ back this secret from you / I probably shouldn’t tell it, but / But if I, if I let you know / You can’t tell nobody, I’m talkin’ ’bout nobody.” Secrets keep coming out — or teeter around the rim — as the state tournament approaches and the game plan might involve benching several starting players.

Tony-nominated director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Fefu and Her Friends, Anatomy of a Suicide) guides the action like a masterful basketball coach, smoothly transitioning between offense and defense, knowing exactly who should have the ball at any given moment. The play is in constant motion, leaving no time for slacking. In a brilliant move, the stage crew dress like referees, adding humor and referencing how the players are too often being judged.

While it’s about a lot more than just basketball, Jones doesn’t overplay the metaphors, keeping her eyes on the rock as the action heats up. Mika Eubanks’s costumes range from sweats, shorts, and T-shirts to snazzy uniforms, with Adam Honoré’s lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s sound contributing to the overall tension.

The title refers specifically to a play run by the five players on the court, but it also evokes the Brooklyn street dance known as flexing, a word used for boasting or expressing oneself, and the standard dictionary meaning, to bend, intimating that the teammates have to be flexible if they want to succeed.

The cast, which also features Eboni Edwards as the sixth member of the Lady Train, comes together like a successful team with a legitimate shot at the crown. They face serious issues at school and at home, with boyfriends, girlfriends, and relatives, and with race and religion, but the more they work together, the more their goals are within reach, but it’s going to take more than a buzzer-beating three-pointer for them to win in the game of life.

Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) leads his team on the Battle Field in Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Through August 20
www.nytw.org

Over at New York Theatre Workshop, Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall features seven characters on a floor of dirt and mulch, constructed around the game of basketball while being about much more, although precisely what gets garbled like a stalled offense and a defense with too many holes.

The ninety-minute play, a melding of Greek and Yoruba mythology told as an epic poem in chapters, opens with the fine cast introducing themselves, a dose of reality that immediately blurs the fantasy that follows. At the center is Demi (Mister Fitzgerald), a demigod born to Zeus (Michael Laurence) and the mortal Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock). Observing the proceedings are the River Goddess Osún (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), Sàngó, an Orisha God of Thunder (Jason Bowen), Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, Women, and Family (Kelley Curran), the Orisha Gods Òrúnmilà and Elégba (Lizan Mitchell), and other mythical figures. Because his father is Zeus, the young Demi, called the Town Crier because of his propensity to rain down tears, is banned from playing basketball, which in this world represents war.

Mortals play on a makeshift court known as the Battle Field — “where generals were honored and mere soldiers crushed” — built with telephone poles, tires, fishing nets, and charcoal. “Basketball was more than sport; the boys were obsessed,” Elégba says. “They played with a righteous thirst,” Hera adds. Sàngó: “There were parries, thrusts . . .” Elégba: “shields and shots . . .” Zeus: “strategies and tactics . . .” Osún: “land won and lost . . .” Modúpé: “duels fought . . .” Hera: “ball like a missile . . .” Zeus: “targets locked.”

When Demi surprisingly reveals a remarkable shooting acumen, everyone begins to view him differently. But Demi’s prowess leads to both an NBA contract as well as disagreements among the Gods and a war that takes place with weapons, not a round ball.

Similarly to the young women in Flex, the young men in Rainfall engage in trash-talking and worship Michael Jordan; among the same issues that are brought up are sexual assault, prayer, and competition that extends beyond the court. Whereas the women see basketball as a way to improve their lot in life and form a close group, in Rainfall “Hera rolled her eyes at how mortal Gods could be, how like men to reduce disputes down to sporting feats, but it was done: the stakes, awful, the route to run.”

Characters in Rainfall shift between dialogue and narration, often in the same speech, so it can become confusing whether they’re talking to the audience or the other Gods and mortals. Too much of the action is described instead of playing out on the court, turning the show into a kind of staged reading. Riccardo Hernández’s set contains scrims on three sides where Tal Yarden projects abstract and concrete images that only add to the perplexity. Linda Cho’s costumes and the props at times feel more like cosplay than serious theater.

The thirty-eight-year-old Ellams, who was born in Nigeria and raised there and in England and Ireland, has been playing basketball since he was twelve; he is also a Marvel Comics enthusiast and has written books and performed solo shows. He stuffs too much into The Half-God of Rainfall, which also has problems with its timeline as it ventures between the ancient and the present, particularly when Sàngó mentions which other real-life all-stars are demigods. (How many people in the audience are likely to know who Clyde Drexler is?)

From start to finish, Flex shows that it’s got game, effectively executing its strategy with an expert balance of humor and sincerity as it sets its sights on its championship goals. The Half-God of Rainfall is all over the place, in desperate need of a tactical blueprint if it wants to have a shot at possibly making the playoffs.

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

UPTOWN SERIES: TOROS

Frank Wood plays an ailing golden retriever in Danny Tejera’s Toros (photo by Joan Marcus)

TOROS
Second Stage Theater Uptown, McGinn/Cazale Theater
2162 Broadway at Seventy-Sixth St.
Through August 13, $60-$75
2st.com/shows/toros

Three twentysomething friends who attended the same international grade school in Madrid reconnect in Danny Tejera’s beguilingly quirky and unpredictable Toros. Juan (Juan Castano) is a wannabe DJ who works on his music in the garage. Toro (Abubakr Ali) has just returned from an unhappy stint in New York City. And the free-spirited Andrea (b) teaches kindergarten when she’s not rolling joints. All three live at home as they try to figure out what they want to do with their lives, spending their evenings drinking, smoking, going to clubs, and hoping there is something better out there.

All the while, Juan’s ailing, elderly golden retriever, Tica (Frank Wood), is curled up in her bed at the front corner of the stage. Throughout the show, she adjusts her positions, lets out small snores, howls, and barks, and moves awkwardly across the floor, her ancient bones wasting away. The dog soldiers on but is a constant reminder that everyone is eventually going to die, and it might be ugly and painful.

The bullheaded Juan — “toro” means bull in Spanish — is a nasty guy who is mean to Toro, unable to say anything kind. Toro is a lost soul who can’t decide whether he wants to be with his friends or be alone. Andrea is the only one of the trio who has a firm grasp of who she is, although the recent tragic death of her sister has her reevaluating her future. Another death impacts the way they interact with themselves and the world.

Tejera (Scary Faces Happy Faces) and director Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Wish You Were Here, Animal) don’t make it easy for the audience at Second Stage’s McGinn/Cazale Theater, but only in the best ways. Each of the characters has serious flaws and does things that they can’t take back even if they wanted to. The dialogue, which is mostly in English with occasional Spanish, crackles with unexpected lines.

Toro (Abubakr Ali) scratches Tica (Frank Wood) while Juan (Juan Castano) tends to his music in Toros (photo by Joan Marcus)

Set designer Arnulfo Maldonado has crafted an intricate and realistic garage, complete with a fancy car under a white sheet, gardening equipment, and a bathroom that continually overflows. Curiously, there is a wall of plants and trees right outside the garage, which would prevent the car from pulling out into the driveway; perhaps it’s meant to imply that the characters are trapped. (Juan and Toro work for Juan’s father’s real estate company, finding houses for others as they are still stuck living with their parents.)

On the subway home, we heard a few people who had been at the show questioning that scenic choice as well — the designer achieved a thought-provoking response, as do the unique writing, acting, and direction. I’ve seldom been on a train coming home from the theater with as many lively discussions going on.

Castano (A Parallelogram, Transfers), b (American (Tele)Visions, Unprincess Non-Bride), and Ali (We Live in Cairo, Kiss) are terrific as childhood friends who don’t necessarily have much in common anymore, but Wood steals the show as Tica, who is onstage nearly the entire smoothly paced ninety minutes. “Tica” can be translated as ethics, which is something that Juan can learn a lot about.

“All the things people usually want: money, or fame, or — raising a family or doing social work — I was just like, none of that seems that great or useful anyway, you know?” Toro says. “And — I just sort of like, stopped believing in reality. . . . Like, it just seemed like, no matter what I saw in front of me, it was all so obviously performed.”

There’s nothing obvious about the wonderfully performed Toros.

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

HERE LIES LOVE

Imelda (Arielle Jacobs) and Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana) dance their way to power in Here Lies Love (photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan Zimmerman)

HERE LIES LOVE
Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway at 53rd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $49 – $299
herelieslovebroadway.com

“Why don’t you love me?” Imelda Marcos (Arielle Jacobs) asks in Here Lies Love, the fast-paced extravaganza thrilling audiences at the reconfigured Broadway Theatre. Obviously, she hasn’t been paying attention, too obsessed with greed, corruption, and power.

Here Lies Love started out as a 2010 concept album about Marcos by former Talking Heads leader David Byrne and musician and DJ Fatboy Slim, featuring Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Martha Wainwright, Natalie Merchant, Florence Welch, Cyndi Lauper, Nellie McKay, and others. The full-on show opened at the Public’s LuEsther Hall in 2013, when I called it “a spectacular, must-see event, an immersive, endlessly creative theatrical experience.” It’s still all that and more.

Set designer David Korins has ripped out most of the seats in the theater, so hundreds of people gather on the floor, where large rectangular platforms (nearly four feet high) are pushed around by stagehands while other crew members guide the audience like airplane safety ground handlers so revelers don’t get smushed. There are a few mezzanine rows on two sides of the theater; at one end there are two dozen rows of more traditional balcony seating, while at the other is the main stage. In the center of the room is a giant disco ball, evoking Marcos’s New York City penthouse, where she had one installed over a dance floor, and Studio 54, where she liked to party with celebrities.

Throughout the ninety-minute show, Peter Nigrini projects archival news footage, sociopolitical information, images of Johanna Poethig, Vicente Clemente, and Presco Tabios’s 1986 Lakas Samabayanan (“People’s Power”) mural, and live action, documenting Imelda’s determined rise from a poor childhood by winning a local beauty contest and moving to Manila, meeting and falling in love with the ambitious Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana), a military veteran and lawyer with major political aspirations.

Soon she’s swept into a life of position and wealth, although her public statements seem touchingly ingenuous. “The most important things are love and beauty. / It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. / To prosper and to fly — / a basic human right. / The feeling in your heart that you’re secure,” she sings in the opening title number. “Is it a sin to love too much? Is it a sin to care? / I do it all for you. / How can it be unfair?” Most of the lyrics are taken directly from interviews, films, and public statements made by the characters; “here lies love,” for example, is the phrase Imelda wants engraved on her tombstone.

The Marcoses’ rise to power is being challenged by reformer Ninoy Aquino (Conrad Ricamora), a provincial mayor and governor who briefly dated Imelda before becoming a senator who correctly predicted what she and Ferdinand would do to the Philippines. “Out ev’ry night in New York and Paris / Champagne and dancing — while back here at home / People barely surviving — they’re living in shanties! / Our country’s in trouble — but the party goes on!” he declares, earning himself the top spot on their long list of enemies.

Here Lies Love follows the story of Imelda Marcos (Arielle Jacobs) through music and dance (photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan Zimmerman)

Another sad observer of Imelda’s transformation into an egotistical despot is her childhood friend Estrella Cumpas (Melody Butiu), who in some ways represents both the audience and the people of the Philippines. Once wealth and power come her way, Imelda quickly dumps Estrella. In one of the most touching scenes in the show, Estrella watches Imelda on her wedding day, but she is kept on the other side of a gate. Estrella is intent on standing by her friend as long as she can, explaining, “I know that you are in there somewhere / Letters get misplaced in the mail / Guess that there was some confusion / Amidst those throngs and swells / Did you see me outside? / Did you see me wave? / When you passed in your car / Ah, well, that’s okay — / How she looked when she passed by / How she looked when she passed by.” But Imelda has moved on, trying to erase her poverty-stricken past from her official story.

In 1965, Ferdinand became the tenth president of the Philippines, and for more than twenty years he ruled with an iron fist, having his rivals jailed and murdered, cheating on Imelda, silencing the media, establishing martial law, and lying to the populace as he grew ridiculously rich.

Shortly after the wedding, a press attaché (Jeigh Madjus) announces, “And the whole world can see / They’re our Jackie and John . . . What a picture they make / I’m so proud for us all.” But that’s not at all the way things turned out.

Tony-winning director Alex Timbers (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Moulin Rouge!) infuses Here Lies Love with nonstop energy spreading across the theater; while the central action follows Ferdinand, Imelda, and Ninoy, the ensemble moves and grooves to Olivier nominee Annie-B Parson’s electric choreography on podiums in the balcony, as if featured dancers in a nightclub. A ladder is occasionally wheeled to the balcony so the main characters can interact with the audience there.

The staging works on multiple levels, but, most important, it helps attendees experience some of what the Filipino people felt during the Marcoses’ ascent. At first, the crowd on the floor is sucked into Ferdinand’s populist campaign, cheering, shaking hands with him and Imelda, and eagerly posing with them for photos and videos. But soon after, they are at an Aquino rally, joining in the rage against the Marcoses’ rampant corruption.

Justin Townsend’s lighting is flashy and bold, splashing flickering colors everywhere. Clint Ramos’s colorful costumes are inspired by such traditional Filipino styles as the terno and the barong. M. L. Dogg and Cody Spencer’s pumping sound shakes the house, led by a fast-talking DJ (Moses Villarama) who keeps the party going even after the show is over. Music director J. Oconer Navarro guides the band across tender ballads and splashy disco and pop, with Joe Cruz on guitar, Derek Nievergelt on bass, and Jacqueline Acevedo, Gustavo Di Dalva, Brandon Ilaw, Paula Winter, and Yuri Yamashita on percussion.

Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast has Llana (The King and I, The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee), Ricamora (The King and I, Soft Power), and Butiu (Doctor Zhivago, South Pacific) reprising their roles from the Public Theater production, and all three embody their characters with skill and confidence; Butiu is particularly touching as the friend left behind, essentially representing all the people the Marcoses steamrolled. Jacobs (In the Heights, Between the Lines) is almost too likable as Imelda, although you run out of sympathy for the woman known as the Iron Butterfly by the end. Jasmine Forsberg (Broadway Bounty Hunter, A Grand Night for Singing) is Maria Luisa and Imelda’s inner voice.

Through August 13, Tony winner Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon, Once on This Island) brings down the house as Aurora Aquino, Ninoy’s mother, singing the heartfelt “Just Ask the Flowers” dressed in all black, surrounded by black umbrellas. Kristina Doucette plays Ninoy’s wife, Cory; Timothy Matthew Flores is their son.

Oscar, Grammy, and Tony winner Byrne (Joan of Arc: Into the Fire, American Utopia) and Grammy winner Fatboy Slim (“Praise You,” “The Rockafeller Skank”) have ingeniously transformed the story of despicable despots into a cautionary tale and all-out dance celebration — and with only one mention of shoes.

Ferdinand died in 1986 at the age of seventy-two; Imelda, who concluded a nine-year run in the Philippine House of Representatives in 2019, is still alive, now ninety-four, and their son Bongbong, aka Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was elected president of the country in a landslide in 2022.

“Don’t let them look down on us,” Imelda calls out in “Please Don’t.” It seems she has little to worry about.

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

TICKET ALERT: THE MUSIC CRITIC

John Malkovich, Hyung-ki Joo, and Aleksey Igudesman star in The Music Critic, coming to the Beacon for one night only

Who: John Malkovich, Aleksey Igudesman, Hyung-ki Joo
What: The Music Critic, play with live classical music and opera
Where: Beacon Theatre, Broadway at 74th St.
When: Saturday, October 28, $66-$257, 7:30
Why: In such films as Being John Malkovich and cable series as The New Pope, two-time Oscar nominee and Emmy winner John Malkovich (Places in the Heart, In the Line of Fire) has shown that he has a wickedly clever sense of humor, especially when it comes to himself. Since appearing on Broadway four times from 1984 to 1987 (Death of a Salesman, Arms and the Man, The Caretaker, Burn This), his stage work in New York has been limited. In 2011, he starred as the title murderer in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer at BAM, and two years later he portrayed Giacomo Casanova at City Center in The Giacomo Variations; both traveling productions combined classical music, opera, and theater.

On October 28, Malkovich will return to the city for one night only with his latest traveling show, The Music Critic, in which he plays a cynical expositor who argues that Antonín Dvořák “indulges in ugly, unnatural music,” calls Johannes Brahms a “giftless bastard,” and claims that “the music of Debussy has the attractiveness of a pretty, tubercular maiden.” It was created and conceived by Russian violinist, poet, author, director, composer, and conductor Aleksey Igudesman, who performs in the international hit with his longtime comedy partner, Korean-British pianist, composer, and educator Hyung-ki Joo; both trained at the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School. The irreverent comic duo of Igudesman & Joo has previously staged such productions as And Now Rachmaninoff, And Now Mozart, and BIG Nightmare Music.

“We are all happy to be back on the road, and for the first time also in the USA, participating in an evening which consists of some of the greatest compositions in the history of classical music, paired with the perhaps rather unexpected initial reactions those compositions elicited from some of the world’s renowned music critics, along with some other surprises,” Malkovich said in a statement. Igudesman added, “The Music Critic is a project very close to my heart, and bringing it to the USA is something I dreamed of from its inception. My dear friend John Malkovich in the role of the evil critic is despicable and lovable at the same time and evokes the critic in every one of us.”

The score of The Music Critic features Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Prokofiev, Eugène Ysaÿe, Giya Kancheli, Astor Piazzolla, and Igudesman; Igudesman and Joo will be joined by cellist Antonio Lysy, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and violinist Claire Wells. Be prepared for an unpredictable evening of fab music and comic high jinks.

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

HARLEM WEEK: A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM AND MORE

Who: Uptown Dance Academy, the Gospel Caravan, IMPACT Repertory Theatre, Mama Foundation’s Sing Harlem! Choir, Bishop Hezekiah Walker & Choir, Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band featuring Nona Hendryx, more
What: Annual Harlem Week celebration
Where: U.S. Grant National Memorial Park, West 122nd St. at Riverside Dr.
When: Sunday, August 13, free, noon – 7:00 pm (festival runs August 9-16)
Why: One of the centerpieces of Harlem Week is “A Great Day in Harlem,” which takes place Sunday, August 13, as part of this annual summer festival. There will be an international village with booths selling food, clothing, jewelry, and more, as well as live music and dance divided into “Artz, Rootz & Rhythm,” “The Gospel Caravan,” “The Fashion Flava Fashion Show,” and “The Concert Under the Stars.” Among the performers are the Uptown Dance Academy, the Gospel Caravan, IMPACT Repertory Theatre, the Sing Harlem! Choir, and Bishop Hezekiah Walker & Choir. In addition, Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band, featuring Nona Hendryx, will perform a tribute to the one and only Tina Turner, who died in May at the age of eighty-three; Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Miriam Makeba, and Tito Puente will also be honored.

The theme of the forty-ninth annual Harlem Week is “Be the Change: Hope. Joy. Love.”; it runs August 9-16 with such other free events as the panel discussion “Climate & Environmental Justice in Harlem: Storms, Heat & Wildfires,” A Harlem SummerStage concert, Senior Citizens Day, the Uptown Night Market, the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Walk & Children’s Run, “Choose Healthy Life Service of Renewal and Healing,” Great Jazz on the Great Hill in Central Park with Wycliffe Gordon and Bobby Sanabria, Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival screenings of Beat Street with DJ Spivey and Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, a Youth Conference & Hackathon, Economic Development Day, an Arts & Culture Broadway Summit, Harlem on My Mind Conversations, a Jobs & Career Fair, and more. “We continue to build a stronger, more united Harlem, radiating hope, joy, and love throughout our beloved city,” Harlem Week chairman Lloyd Williams said in a statement.

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

THE COTTAGE

Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy) and Beau (Eric McCormack) discuss their future in The Cottage (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE COTTAGE
Hayes Theater
240 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 29, $109-$169
thecottageonbroadway.com

“Why do I have a sense of impending disaster?” a character asks early in Tom Stoppard’s 1981 farce, On the Razzle. “One false move and we could have a farce on our hands.”

The best farces build comedy around impending disasters, usually involving class and romance, from Noël Coward’s Present Laughter and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and Molière’s The Miser. But the less-successful farces are hampered by too many false moves.

Sandy Rustin’s 2014 drawing room comedy of manners, The Cottage, which opened July 24 at the Hayes Theater on Broadway, starts off well enough. As the audience enters the space, the stage is covered by a screen depicting the image of a colorful, idyllic cottage covered in plants and flowers — as well as several pairs of animals engaged in overt sexual behavior; a bra dangles from a tree branch, hinting at what is going on inside. The screen is then raised to reveal Paul Tate dePoo III’s wonderful set, which deservedly gets its own applause. The large room is filled with elegant furniture, sculptures, books, paintings, a bar, a globe, a gramophone, and seemingly endless knickknacks.

It’s June 1923, and Beau (Eric McCormack) is at his family’s cottage in the English countryside, in the midst of his annual tryst with Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy), which has been going on for seven years. Sylvia is ready to take their relationship to the next level, but Beau is apprehensive.

An all-star cast cannot save the Broadway debut of The Cottage (photo by Joan Marcus)

“I wish you were my husband,” she says.

“If I were your husband you would despise me just as you despise Clarke and you would spend your evenings wishing to make love to him and not me,” Beau replies, referring to his brother, Clarke (Alex Moffat), who is married to Sylvia. “Romance, my dear, is for fairy tales. This is not a romance. This is sex,” Beau adds. “Un-wifely sex.”

Beau is none-too-thrilled when Sylvia announces that she has sent telegrams to both Clarke and Marjorie (Lilli Cooper), Beau’s wife, revealing the affair. Clarke and Marjorie soon arrive separately with secrets of their own, followed by Dierdre (Dana Steingold), a whirling dervish who is in love with Beau and is worried that her husband, Richard (Nehal Joshi), will find out where she is and kill him — but not before they all have some fun. “I didn’t expect a party. Will there be games?” Dierdre declares. The fun and games take a drastic downturn in the far-less-effective second act.

Subtitled “A Romantic and (Not Quite) Murderous Comedy of Manners,” The Cottage could be renamed The Farce That Goes Wrong. The all–North American cast (McCormack is Canadian) speaks in overly dramatic British accents. Many of the props offer surprise jokes that quickly become repetitive, while others are just plain head scratchers — antlers, I’m talking about you.

The play, gleefully helmed by the Tony-winning, Emmy-nominated Jason Alexander (Seinfeld, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway) in his directorial debut, does have its fair share of amusing exchanges, particularly in the first act, and there were two genuinely funny moments that appeared to be spontaneous, one involving a shoe, the other a bunch of grapes, resulting in the actors trying their best to hold back their own laughter and failing wonderfully. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough of that.

Sydney Maresca’s costumes are appropriately genteel, from Clarke’s tweed suit to Sylvia’s white negligee to Beau’s smoking jacket. Justin Ellington’s sound design is overwhelmed by the actors speaking way too loud, which often impacts the believability of the plot; numerous times, characters have discussions they don’t want others to hear, but it’s hard to believe that a person knocking at the front door can’t hear what two people are saying as they shout right on the other side.

The cast is all in, but the lack of subtlety drags the show down; it might have worked better as a ninety-minute one-act instead of two hours with intermission. The actors, particularly Saturday Night Live veteran Moffat and Steingold (Beetlejuice, Avenue Q), display a talent for physical comedy, but a gaggle of gags feels tossed in purely for giggles, not organic to the story. A stage farce needs to be clever and witty first, without the pratfalls, in order to capture the audience; otherwise, as with The Cottage, you end up with an overlong episode of a mediocre sitcom or SNL skit.

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

THE LITTLE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

THE LITTLE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Pl.
August 3-19, $20 streaming, $25 in person
www.frigid.nyc/festivals/shakesfest

One of the most important aspects of William Shakespeare’s canon is how open each play is to interpretation and adaptation. The Bard’s works are regularly retold with changes in time and location, race and gender, style and genre. It’s gotten so that it is rarer to see a traditional production than one involving significant alterations, including such elements as contemporary pop music, modern-day political issues, the rise of a minor character, and zombies.

Presented by FRIGID New York, the Little Shakespeare Festival offers Bard fans the opportunity to see seven shows that take unique looks at different aspects of Shakespeare’s genius. Running August 3-19 at UNDER St. Marks in the East Village, the third annual fest is curated by Conor D Mullen, who created As You Will with David Brummer and George Hider, an unscripted evening of improv in which the audience shouts out titles of plays that Shakespeare might have written had he not died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, and then the cast acts them out; among the past titles are Eight Merry Spiders, That Doth Not Go There, and 1601: A Space Odyssey.

Kristina Del Mar stars in Djingo Productions’ Wheel of Fortune at Little Shakespeare Festival (photo by Miguel Garzón Martínez)

“Sitting in UNDER St. Marks, it’s not too hard for me to imagine William Shakespeare working here,” Mullen said in a statement. “He’d have used his words to turn this space into a Roman dungeon, a Scottish castle, or a moonlit Athenian forest. His actors would have loved having the audience so close they could speak with them directly. And, of course, he would have been very approving of a bar inside the theater, since in his own time audience members who wanted a drink had to leave the theater and visit a local bar. It’s a reminder for me that Shakespeare doesn’t just live on when performed in giant, open air amphitheaters or big, Broadway houses; he also lives in these most humble of places, where I think he would have felt quite at home. Here, with you and me, at the Little Shakespeare Festival.”

Five of the six presentations (one is a double bill) are also available as livestreams so you can watch them in your own home. Barefoot Shakespeare Company’s Lady Capulet, written by Melissa Bell and directed by Emily Gallagher, is a prequel to Romeo and Juliet that explores the role of women in today’s society; Jianzi Colón-Soto stars as Rose Capulet. Djingo Productions’ Wheel of Fortune, written and directed by Jing Ma, is a problem play dealing with isolation, connection, and mass shootings in the digital age. C.A.G.E. Theatre Company’s THE ROOM of Falsehood, written and directed by Michael Hagins, reimagines Tommy Wiseau’s late-night cult favorite, The Room, through a Shakespearean lens. First Flight Theatre Company’s Shakespeare’s Deaths and Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea, both directed by Frank Farrell, are a forty-five-minute double header in which, first, five actors depict all major deaths in Shakespeare, and then, second, eight female Bard characters sit down for a chat in which they can only speak lines that Shakespeare wrote for them. And in Hamlet Isn’t Dead’s Shrew You! written by David Andrew Laws and directed by Sophia Carlin, four actresses repair The Taming of the Shrew.

Most of the shows run an hour or less (Lady Capulet is 110 minutes); in-person tickets are only $25, while livestream access is $20, in order to get an intimate little taste of Shakespeare in 2023.

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