this week in theater

THE HARDER THEY COME

Ivan (Natey Jones, far left) arrives in the city seeking fame and fortune in The Harder They Come (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE HARDER THEY COME
Newman Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 9, $105
publictheater.org

There’s a big difference between a show or movie with music and a fully fledged musical, in which original songs help propel the narrative. That divergence is one of the central flaws in the world premiere of The Harder They Come, at the Public’s Newman Theater through April 9.

The 1972 movie is a Jamaican cult favorite that recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary; it follows a country boy named Ivanhoe Martin, portrayed by reggae legend Jimmy Cliff in his first and only starring role as an actor, who arrives in Kingston with little more than a guitar and the dream of making a hit record. The soundtrack is one of the all-time greats, consisting of genre-defining tunes by the Maytals (“Sweet and Dandy,” “Pressure Drop”), the Slickers (“Johnny Too Bad”), Desmond Dekker (“007 [Shanty Town]”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon”), Scotty (“Draw Your Brakes”), and Cliff himself, who contributed six songs, including the title track, the only one written specifically for the film.

In her book, Public writer-in-residence and Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks, who has written such hard-hitting plays as Topdog/Underdog, Fucking A, and Father Comes Home from the Wars . . . , squeezes too many songs that were background and incidental in the film into the show’s narrative, forcing them into the plot.

An accomplished singer-songwriter, as evidenced by her terrific Plays for the Plague Year, a three-hour intimate performance piece about the pandemic that reopens at Joe’s Pub on April 5, Parks adds several new songs to The Harder They Come, including “Hero Don’t Never Die,” “Please Tell Me Why,” and “Better Days,” expanding, and sometimes changing, the motivations of various characters as Parks attempts to smooth out the bumps and choppiness of the film.

Alas, that is part of its charm. And I’m still trying to understand why the second act opens with Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” which Cliff recorded in 1993 for the film Cool Runnings about the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. The song was part of Reggae Hit the Town: Crucial Reggae 1968-1972, a bonus disc added to the soundtrack album years later; Dekker’s “Israelites” also is in the show from the same collection.

Preacher (J. Bernard Calloway) has a tight hold on his congregation in world premiere at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

The story is a rough and violent drama that begins with Ivan traveling to the big city to give his mother, Daisy (Jeannette Bayardelle), her pittance of an inheritance. She wants him to return to the country, but Ivan (Natey Jones) is determined to stay and become a star. With no place to go, he hooks up with the Holy Redeemer Church after meeting and instantly falling for the young and innocent Elsa (Meecah), the orphan ward of the church’s well-connected Preacher (J. Bernard Calloway).

Desperate to make a record, Ivan ultimately signs a terrible contract with local music mogul Hilton (Ken Robinson), a wealthy man who controls what gets played when and where. With no money, Ivan starts working for ganja dealer Jose (Dominique Johnson), who is in cahoots with a plainclothes cop named Ray (Dudney Joseph Jr). Everywhere he goes, Ivan creates conflict with the avaricious men of Kingston, battling religion, drug lords, law enforcement, and corporate greed in his determination to get what he believes he deserves. “You can get it if you really want it / But you must try, try and try, try and try,” he sings.

Instead of laying low like his best friend, Pedro (Jacob Ming-Trent), who also sells for Jose, Ivan can’t stop speaking his mind. After an altercation with a policeman, Ivan is on the run, attempting to hold things together while also reveling in his newfound fame.

Directed by Tony Taccone (Bridge & Tunnel, Wishful Drinking) with codirector Sergio Trujillo, who is best known for his choreography for jukebox bio-musicals (Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, A Bronx Tale), The Harder They Come contains numerous wonderful scenes with fabulous music, performed by a strong cast (Ming-Trent stands out, his character providing comic relief and an honest perspective) and an excellent six-piece band; Kenny Seymour’s orchestrations and arrangements do justice to the originals, although some snippets are too much of a tease and a few of Parks’s new songs are overly melodramatic. In addition, you never get to hear the title track in full; as a kind of encore, it is performed at the very end, but one stanza is curiously left out.

Local music mogul Hilton (Ken Robinson) offers Ivan (Natey Jones) a bad deal in The Harder They Come (photo by Joan Marcus)

Choreographer Edgar Godineaux makes sure the movement never gets out of hand on Clint Ramos and Diggle’s two-level shanty town set, strewn with garbage drums, used tires, multiple old TV sets and speakers on the walls, bamboo, palm leaves, and muted greens and yellows inspired by the Jamaican flag (found also on the railings near the stage), along with earth-toned colors that are also prominent in Emilio Sosa’s costumes. The sound is by Walter Trarbach, with lighting by Japhy Weideman.

In the film, directed by Perry Henzell and cowritten with Trevor Rhone, Cliff’s Ivan already had a hard edge, a willingness to become an outlaw to fight for what he thinks is fair. But in Parks’s version, Jones (Get Up Stand Up, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) portrays a far more naive and good-natured Ivan, more sensitive to Elsa’s needs and not as inherently dangerous. Cliff’s Ivan is proud of what he did to the policeman and glories in becoming a hero-villain who cheats on his wife and smokes big spleefs, while Jones’s Ivan claims the incident was accidental and never fully inhabits the character’s bad side.

The show has been stripped of its nuance, too easily pitting good vs. evil amid hierarchical, colonialist power structures. While a lot has changed since the film came out half a century ago, a lot hasn’t. This theatrical iteration — Henzell oversaw the script for a 2005 British adaptation — ends up caught somewhere in between.

[Note: The Public is hosting the “Wheel & Come Again” art auction on the mezzanine level, with more than a dozen works available, from $300 to $1000, inspired by the film and musical, raising funds to benefit scholarships at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston.]

BAD CINDERELLA

Bad Cinderella (Linedy Genao) rises up in Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

BAD CINDERELLA
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 4, $48-$298
badcinderellabroadway.com

At last Friday night’s performance of Bad Cinderella at the Imperial, a boisterous trio of big men sat behind us, their belly laughs and rousing cheers shaking our row throughout the first act. During intermission, I turned to my friend and said, “I want to watch what they’re watching.”

Indeed, what show were they watching?

I am not going to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of the American retitling of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, which has added the word Bad, but it’s hard not to. I found the two-and-a-half-hour musical more insulting and embarrassing than downright bad; I knew we were in trouble when my musical-loving friend wasn’t giving even perfunctory applause after songs. “You’ve ruined theater for me forever,” she told me outside at intermission, as if it was my fault for taking her. “I might never see another show.”

Bad Cinderella is everything you’ve heard and worse.

Lloyd Webber, whose composer son Nick tragically died from gastric cancer on March 25 at the age of forty-three, has some fierce competition in the alt-fairy-tale Broadway musical realm. Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked has been packing them in on the Great White Way since 2003. The recent limited-run revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods was spectacular. And musical minions are still kvelling over Douglas Carter Beane’s 2013 family-friendly adaptation of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s more traditional Cinderella.

Bad Cinderella is ostensibly about being proud of one’s personal identity and defying the populist adherence to conventional ideas of beauty and success. But in its attempts to be clever, unpredictable, and, dare I say, woke, it steps all over itself, fumbling its themes and confusing its basic principles.

The Queen (Grace McLean) and the Stepmother (Carolee Carmello) do battle in Bad Cinderella (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

The show opens with the innocuous “Buns ’n’ Roses / Beauty Is Our Duty,” in which random characters at the Belleville Market revel in their hotness amid garish sexual innuendo. “Hot buns! Check out my hot buns!” the hunky baker declares. “True, there are not buns / Equal to mine.”

Various townspeople blast out, “Our town Belleville is a place so picturesque, / Makes every other town jealous. / So exquisite, every other seems grotesque. . . . Every single citizen’s a cut and chiseled god, / Beauty is our duty. / Everyone among us has a ripped and rockin’ bod. . . . We’re quite shallow, / We’re obsessed with how we look. / It’s quite OK if you’re dumb here. / Every lawn is manicured / As well as every hand.”

“Wrinkles are not tolerated, torsos must be tanned. / Acne is a misdemeanor, / Cellulite is banned. . . . So what if we’re a bit snooty” is about as sophisticated as Tony winner David Zippel’s lyrics gets.

The book, by Oscar winner Emerald Fennell and adapted by playwright Alexis Scheer for the Broadway run, is a “hot mess,” which is what the townspeople call Cinderella. Cinderella is ripe for interpretation; the Brothers Grimm and Rodgers & Hammerstein are only two of thousands who have told a similar tale going back two millennia. The most famous version was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault, the basis for the 1950 animated film by Walt Disney, a rags-to-riches story of magic, abuse, discrimination, misogyny, and outmoded ideals of what makes a person attractive and desired.

Director Laurence Connor and choreographer JoAnn M. Hunter hit a brick wall just a few minutes in, after the unveiling of a statue in honor of the missing Prince Charming (Cameron Loyal) reveals that Cinderella (Linedy Genao) has defaced it with a graffiti-esque banner declaring, “Beauty Sucks.” The townspeople call her a “psychopath” who “should be arrested,” but a moment later the hunky men are lifting her up as if she’s a hero, not a villain, and she proudly proclaims, “I’m a loner, I’m a freak, a rebel. . . . a girl from the gutter, unpleasant peasant, no one, a nutter, unwelcome present.”

Cinderella is badly mistreated by her stepmother (Carolee Carmello) and two gorgeous but hollow and dimwitted stepsisters, Adele (Sami Gayle) and Marie (Morgan Higgins). Her only friend is Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson), now heir to the throne, a shy young man with no kingly aspirations who the women in the town deride, complaining, “What a disappointment is this prince! / Look at him! My heart can’t help but wince! / He’s not the type on which girls set their sights.”

It doesn’t help that Sebastian is handsome, even in his militaristic outfit, even if he is dour, unhappy to be thrust into the limelight, while Cinderella, in her long black leather jacket, tight-fitting shirt, and maroon pants, is not only cool but hot, at least to the audience if not to the vain citizens of Belleville. “I’m the opposite of ev’rthing you are!” she sings. So why, about halfway through the show, does she go to Godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson), a nasty plastic surgeon, wanting her to transform her into a beauty, to be just like everyone else so the prince will choose her for his bride at the ball?

“The damsel wants to save the prince in distress. How very modern
of you,” Godmother says, but there’s nothing modern about it. No longer a fairy, Godmother doesn’t work magic, so her assertion that Cinderella’s makeover will last only until midnight is absurd, as is Sebastian’s inability to recognize Cinderella at the dance.

Bad Cinderella is laden with huge plot holes and incongruities galore; while there’s no need to stick close to any of the familiar versions, it feels like Connor (Les Misérables, School of Rock), Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera), Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Killing Eve), Scheer (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Laughs in Spanish), and Zippel (City of Angels, The Woman in White) choose the least reasonable turn at each crossroad as they teeter back and forth between old-fashioned values and contemporary mores.

Gabriela Tylesova’s sets, dominated by the forest’s ominous tree branches, serve their purpose, although her costumes leave something to be desired, specifically, men’s shirts, as several male dancers are bare-chested every step of the way. Luc Verschueren’s hair and wigs are fun, Bruno Poet’s lights are bright, and Gareth Owen’s sound is loud. The title song might stick with you for a while, but you’ll try hard to get it out of your head; the British show earned a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album, naming Andrew, Nick, and Greg Wells as producers.

Carmello (Scandalous, Lestat) and McLean (Cyrano, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) go too far over the top, especially in what should have been a classic duet in which they battle each other (“I Know You”). Dobson (Hadestown, West Side Story) lacks style and energy as Sebastian but is still likable, while Genao (On Your Feet, Dear Evan Hansen) fares well as Cinderella despite the inconsistencies built into the character.

Ultimately, Bad Cinderella is unable to figure out what story it wants to tell and who its audience is. The creative team should talk to those three men sitting behind me, even if they did quiet down significantly in the second act.

black odyssey

Ulysses Lincoln (Sean Boyce Johnson) searches for a way back to Harlem in black odyssey (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

black odyssey
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Through March 26, $77
classicstage.org

Marcus Gardley’s black odyssey is one of those genius ideas you hope will pay off. It turns out to be a mixed bag, as poet, playwright, assistant professor, actor, and screenwriter Gardley and director Stevie Walker-Webb have so many takes on the story that it sometimes feels like they’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the audience, and the message feels clogged in the end.

A reimagining of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey through the lens of African American history, the play premiered in Denver in 2014 and was revised three years later for the California Shakespeare Theater. Revised again for its New York premiere, it is now completing a run at Classic Stage, taking place on David Goldstein’s minimalist set, a glossy black rectangular platform, the only props two halves of a wooden boat.

The 150-minute show (with intermission) opens with a chorus, representing chess pieces, delivering a fourth-wall-breaking prologue.

“Let us begin at the beginning so we may end at the end / Shake off the cares of this day, my friend. Close your eyes / Breathe in the perfume of mother nature: her still waters run deep / As do her blue skies. There is no griot greater. / And like her, we have come to sow and season and play/ But don’t get too excited, this part here is just . . . foreplay,” they announce with a Shakespearean touch.

“You are the true star in our galaxy. / Only you can guide our ship through this tale we call ‘black odyssey.’ / It is by the light of your smile, the sparkle in your eyes / That we compass our way to the end. So, hold on tight, my friend. / Yet get loose: let the music move you some. Sing if you feel like singing / And if you can’t hold a tune then baby hold a hum. Sway. / Dance if your feet can’t stand you. Clap or stomp even if it scares you. / Shout out when the spirit gets in your bones. But please, for the love of the gods turn off your beeping cellphones.”

Harriett D. Foy brings the house down as Aunt Tee in black odyssey at Classic Stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Deus (James T. Alfred), the god of the sky, and Paw Sidin (Jimonn Cole), the god of the sea, are playing chess with mortals’ bodies. Paw Sidin is determined to exact revenge on Ulysses Lincoln (Sean Boyce Johnson), who killed Paw Sidin’s son, Poly’famous (Marcus Gladney Jr.), in battle. Aunt Tee (Harriett D. Foy), the goddess of war who is Deus’s daughter and Ulysses’s aunt, is ready to do whatever is necessary to protect her nephew.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus endures many trials as he attempts to return to his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, in Ithaca after the Trojan War; here, Ulysses is struggling to get home to his wife, Nella P. (D. Woods), and son, Malachai (Gladney Jr.), in Harlem after fighting overseas. “I went to war to make a better life for myself,” he explains. “I wasn’t supposed to serve. I signed up during peacetime but then 9/11 happened, the World Trade Center came down, and before I knew it . . . I was in Afghanistan.”

When Ulysses joined the navy, Nella P. was eight months pregnant. Sixteen years later, Nella refuses to believe that her still-missing husband is dead while she raises Malachai and is beguiled by a suitor (Cole). Over the years, Paw Sidin has put on disguises to trick Nella, punishing her and Malachai. “Revenge is a meal best served raw,” the sea god declares with relish.

The story goes back and forth between the present and flashbacks of Ulysses’s adventures, in which he encounters characters revamped from Homer’s original, including sea creatures Scylla (Foy) and Carib’diss (Adrienne C. Moore), Ulysses’s grandmother Calypso (Foy), the Soul Siren (Lance Coadie Williams), Circe (Moore), Benevolence Nausicca Sabine (Tẹmídayọ Amay), and shagadelic prophet Super Fly Tireseas (Alfred).

A Black family fights for survival in New York premiere at Classic Stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Ulysses’s adventures range from a powerful section in which he joins a Black family floating on their roof in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to being serenaded by Carib’diss, Scylla, and the Soul Siren channeling some of the greatest Black stars of the 1960s and ’70s.

Although the show has several fine performances and terrific individual scenes, Gardley overstuffs the narrative with too many historical and contemporary references, from comical to serious, dating between 1619 and 2017, as Ulysses battles four hundred years of racial injustice. Among the kaleidoscopic references are Sylvia’s Restaurant, Rosa Parks, the Studio Museum in Harlem, James Baldwin, the Schomburg Center, Jay Z, the Hamptons, the subway, Langston Hughes, Famous Fish Market, Malcolm X, JFK, MLK Jr., and The Color Purple.

The play works best when it focuses on the undying love between Ulysses and Nella and Ulysses’s desperate attempts to rejoin his family. Otherwise, it’s all over the place, as are the performances. The standouts are Woods, who gives heart to Nella; Cole as the ever-evil Paw Sidin; Foy as the scene-stealing Aunt Tee; and Johnson, who is marvelous as Ulysses, who represents four centuries of continuing suffering and oppression as well as the unconquerable spirit of Blacks in America.

Gardley (The House That Will Not Stand) and Walker-Webb (one in two, Ain’t No Mo’) try too hard to make black odyssey epic; the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, as captivating and powerful as some of those parts are.

EVERY OCEAN HUGHES: RIVER

Every Ocean Hughes’s River will be performed March 24–26 in conjunction with photography exhibit (photo courtesy Every Ocean Hughes)

Who: Every Ocean Hughes
What: Live performance
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, the Susan and John Hess Family Theater, 99 Gansevoort St.
When: March 24, 7:00; March 25, 4:00 & 7:00; March 26, 4:00, $25; exhibition continues through April 2
Why: Multidisciplinary artist Every Ocean Hughes activates her Whitney photography exhibition “Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side” with four live performances this weekend in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater. Formerly known as Emily Roysdon, Hughes investigates legacy, loss, and inheritance in “Alive Side,” consisting of photographs of the west side piers right outside the Whitney; Hughes calls them “unmarked memorials, found monuments to the lives that needed that unregulated space. To those who died living queerly. Those who died of neglect, poverty, AIDS, violence, and politics. And to those seeking life by crossing West Street.” The black-and-white photos of the dilapidated wooden piers sticking out of the water, some works sliced diagonally in half, are framed in bright pastel colors that evoke the rainbow pride flag. The exhibit also features the forty-minute video One Big Bag, in which a death doula portrayed by Lindsay Rico describes and enacts rituals surrounding the end of life; “the whole process is a creative process,” she says.

Every Ocean Hughes, The Piers Untitled (#12 collaged, #9, #14 collaged, #4), 2009-23 (photo by Ron Amstutz)

On March 24–26, the Maryland-born Hughes, who lives and works in her home state and Stockholm, will present River, a thirty-minute live performance incorporating song, text, choreographed movement, and set design exploring the crossing that takes place at death, the descent into the underworld. The cast includes Rico, Geo WyeX, Æirrinn, and Nora Brown, with movement direction by Monica Mirabile, costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, and lighting by Timothy Johnson. Tickets are $25; it is recommended they be purchased in advance.

THE HUNTING GUN

Josuke Misugi (Mikhail Baryshnikov) watches Shoko (Miki Nakatani) from above in The Hunting Gun (photo by Pasha Antono)

THE HUNTING GUN
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 15, $35-$150
646-731-3200
thehuntinggun.org
bacnyc.org

Miki Nakatani is so mesmerizing in the US premiere of The Hunting Gun that even her costar, in a building named after him, can barely take his eyes off her.

Running in the Jerome Robbins Theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center through April 15, the haunting, heart-wrenchingly poetic play was adapted by Serge Lamothe from Yasushi Inoue’s 1949 novel centered around an illicit love affair that deeply affects four people. In a devastating, award-winning performance, Nakatani plays three roles: a girl named Shoko whose mother, Saiko, has just died; Midori, Saiko’s cousin and best friend; and Saiko herself, essentially communicating from the grave.

BAC founding artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov is Josuke Misugi, a hunter who is married to Midori and had a long tryst with Saiko. The story unfolds as the three female characters read letters they’ve written to Misugi, who witnesses everything from an elevated platform at the back of the stage, behind three black translucent vertical screens with excerpts from the letters in Japanese on them. Each of the female characters wears a different outfit — the gorgeous clothing is by Renée April, with costume changes taking place onstage — while the floor of François Séguin’s eerie, mystical set magically changes for the three women, incorporating the elements of water, earth, and wood. David Finn’s lighting has a supernatural feel, as does Alexander MacSween’s music.

The premise is that Misugi has been moved by a poem he read in The Hunter’s Companion, a magazine not known for its literary prowess. “What made him cold, armed with white, bright steel, / To take the lives of creatures? / Attracted by the tall hunter’s back, / I looked and looked,” it says in part. “As the glittering of a hunting gun, / Stamping its weight on the lonely body, / Lonely mind of a middle-aged man, / Radiates a queer, austere beauty, / Never shown when aimed at life.”

Midori (Miki Nakatani) shares her deep pain in darkly poetic show at BAC (photo by Pasha Antono)

Misugi writes to the poet, believing that he, Misugi, is the lonely hunter the man describes in the poem. He tells him he is going to send him three letters he has received, which he was going to burn. “I would be happy if you would read them at your leisure,” he explains to the author. “It seems to me that a man is foolish enough to want another person to understand him. After you have read them, I hope you’ll burn the three of them for me.” The trio of women then perform the poems while Misugi watches closely from above and carefully cleans his Churchill shotgun.

At first Shoko thanks Misugi for his help after her mother’s death, writing, “I’ve thought and thought about how to say all this, and I have finished, so to speak, the preparation for this letter. But when I pick up my pen, all sorts of sorrows come rushing upon me from every direction, like the white waves at Ashiya on windy days, and these sorrows confuse me.” Her world has been turned inside out since she read her mother’s diaries and found out about the affair. “That love which can’t be kept without being sinful must be a sorrowful thing,” she opines.

Demonstrating her inner strength, Midori begins her letter, “When I write your name in this formal way, I feel my heart throbbing with emotion as though I were writing a love letter. I have written scores of such letters during the last thirteen years, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, but among all of them not one has been addressed to you. Why? That realization makes me feel an oddness I can’t explain logically. Don’t you also think this is funny?”

Saiko’s letter retraces some of the adventures she and Misugi had together while also explaining, “Many hours or many days after I’m gone and have turned into nothing, you will read this letter. And living after me, it will tell you the many thoughts I had when I was alive. As though I were speaking to you, this letter will tell you what I thought and felt — things you don’t yet know. And it will be as though you were talking to me and hearing my voice.”

Josuke Misugi (Mikhail Baryshnikov) cleans his rifle throughout The Hunting Gun (photo by Pasha Antono)

Nakatani (When the Last Sword Is Drawn, Memories of Matsuko, Zero Focus) cautiously roams across the stage as if a butoh dancer, moving almost exasperatingly slowly, delivering the words from the letters like they’re the lily pads or stones beneath her feet. At times it’s like she’s floating, a ghost reliving her characters’ past tinged with a wide range of conflicting emotions.

Baryshnikov (Brodsky/Baryshnikov, The Orchard) sits in a chair, rises, and turns his attention from the Churchill to Nakatani with a master’s touch, his eyes and body understanding precisely how Misugi’s actions impacted Shoko, Midori, and Saiko. He might not speak a word, but his minimal gestures depict anguish and contrition with the skill of an exquisite dancer as Misugi, disengaged from reality, finally sees the pain he has caused others and raises the now pristine rifle.

François Girard, who has made such films as The Red Violin, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, and Silk (costarring Nakatani) in addition to helming numerous operas and theater productions, directs The Hunting Gun with the discipline of a Zen master, allowing the details of the story, which has previously been made into a 1961 melodrama by Heinosuke Gosho and a 2018 opera by Thomas Larcher, to unfold like a butterfly or a bee flitting across a blossoming garden. It is a profoundly sad tale, filled with regret, revenge, and remorse, told with an otherworldly elegance and grace.

It is also a fitting prelude to “Mikhail Baryshnikov at 75: A Day of Music and Celebration,” in which Misha will be honored by Laurie Anderson, Diana Krall, Regina Spektor, Kaoru Watanabe, Mark Morris, and Anna Baryshnikov (his daughter) at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park on June 25; tickets ($75-$500) are available here.

ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM

Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan) has no idea his wife, Alice (Cara Ricketts), is planning to have him murdered in true-crime thriller (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Monday – Saturday through April 1, $77-$112
212-352-3101
www.redbulltheater.com

Red Bull Theater turns to true crime in its devilishly delightful adaptation of the Jacobean-Elizabethan comic noir Arden of Faversham, continuing through April 1 at the Lucille Lortel. Company founding artistic director Jesse Berger and Jeffrey Hatcher previously collaborated on 2017’s hilarious The Government Inspector and 2021’s overwrought The Alchemist. Joined by Kathryn Walat, they now bring back Arden of Faversham — the authorship of which is unknown, with historians debating whether it was written by some combination of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Watson, and William Shakespeare — a rousing romp of love, lust, and class warfare.

The late-sixteenth-century play was inspired by the real-life story of an unfaithful wife’s attempts to murder her wealthy husband with the help of her lover and others. Alice (Cara Ricketts) is tired of her plain, boring spouse, Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan), and has fallen into the arms of a dashing local tailor, Mosby (Tony Roach). Although Arden and his best friend, Franklin (Thom Sesma), suspect something illicit is going on right under their nose, Alice denies it when Arden confronts her. Meanwhile, Susan (Emma Geer), Alice’s maid and Mosby’s sister, is trying to decide between two suitors, the ostentatious painter Clarke (Joshua David Robinson) and the awkward Michael (Zachary Fine), Arden’s timid and clumsy servant.

“It is not love that loves to anger love,” Mosby tells Alice, who answers, “It is not love that loves to murder love.”

Alice and Mosby concoct several plots to take care of their wicked business, enlisting the widow Greene (Veronica Falcón), who believes Arden has stolen her property following her husband’s death; notorious thieves Big Will (David Ryan Smith) and Shakebag (Haynes Thigpen); and Susan, Clarke, and Michael. Mayhem ensues as an unaware Arden keeps avoiding his fate in very funny ways.

A motley crew has been put together for nefarious purposes in Arden of Faversham (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The domestic tragedy takes place on Christopher and Justin Swader’s dark, ominous set, a lush dining room with a fireplace in Arden’s estate that transforms into the front of Franklin’s house and a foggy dock with the clever use of a few props and Reza Behjat’s moody lighting. Mika Eubanks’s period costumes range from Alice’s lovely gowns and Clarke’s absurd finery to the thieves’ sloppiness and Arden’s fur-lined cloak; several characters have modern-day clothing underneath, as well as contemporary shoes, furthering the farce.

Ricketts (Time and the Conways, Measure for Measure) is both alluring and goofy as the conniving Alice; early on, she tells Mosby, “Base peasant, get thee gone, / And boast not of thy conquest over me, / Gotten by witchcraft and mere sorcery.” She also believes, “Love is a god, and marriage is but words.”

Ryan (Dance Nation, Eureka Day), one of New York’s finest character actors, is a riot as her much-put-upon spouse, Arden, a cuckold who exists in a bubble; Sesma (A Man of No Importance, Letters of Suresh) is stalwart as Arden’s dedicated defender, who has a crush on his bestie; Geer (Hindle Wakes, Mary Page Marlow) brings a sweet innocence to Susan; and Fine (Vanity Fair, Coriolanus) once again displays his comic chops as the quirky, uncomfortable Michael.

The plot thickens as Mosby (Tony Roach), Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan), and Alice (Cara Ricketts) share a toast (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Berger (Volpone, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore), Hatcher (A Picasso, Tuesdays with Morrie), and Walat (Creation, Bleeding Kansas) take plenty of liberties with the original story — for example, farmer Greene becomes widow Greene in this adaptation, and Susan is fleshed out significantly, both of which are excellent changes, giving women more agency — and it mostly works, save for a few grisly over-the-top scenes that push things a bit too far.

Did Shakespeare write any of Arden of Faversham? I have no idea, although the names of the thieves, Will and Shakebag, are curious. “It’s daunting to revise a play that Shakespeare may have cowritten. It seems presumptuous,” Hatcher and Walat explain in a program note. Presumptuous as that might be, it’s certainly more than worthwhile in this case.

CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY

Sisters Ermina (Malika Samuel) and Ernestine (Shanel Bailey) face an uncertain future following the death of their mother in Crumbs from the Table of Joy (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 1, $60-$85
www.keencompany.org

After watching Keen Company’s absolutely lovely revival of Lynn Nottage’s first play, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, which has not been seen in New York City since its 1995 world premiere at Second Stage, you’re likely to wonder, “What took so long?” Running at Theatre Row through April 1, it’s an intimate, relatable tale that smartly deals with loss, faith, and hope with a sweet-natured sense of humor.

No mere artifact from a playwright who has gone on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, Crumbs, despite its messy title, beautifully tells the story of the African American Crumb family, who have moved from Florida to Brooklyn following the death of Sandra, wife of thirty-five-year-old Godfrey Crumb (Jason Bowen) and mother to seventeen-year-old Ernestine (Shanel Bailey) and fifteen-year-old Ermina (Malika Samuel). Godfrey, who has a steady job in a bakery, has fallen under the spell of Father Divine, the real-life religious and civil rights leader who founded the International Peace Mission Movement and preached that he was God incarnate. His followers abstained from sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, and foul language; in the Crumb apartment, there’s a small photo of Sandra on top of the radio console but a much larger picture of Father Divine hanging above that on the wall.

Godfrey moved the family to Brooklyn to be closer to Father Divine; as Ernestine, who serves as the narrator, often speaking directly to the audience, explains, “Daddy thought Divine’s Peace Mission was in Brooklyn ’cause of a return address on a miracle elixir boasting to induce ‘peace of mind.’ Divine was not in Brooklyn or New York City. But that didn’t diminish Daddy’s love. No, he let Divine strip away his desire and demand of him a monk’s devotion. This a man who never went to church and never tipped his hat to a woman, until we got to . . . Brooklyn.”

Father Divine hovers over the Crumb family in Keen revival of Lynn Nottage’s first play (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Ernestine is a good student who is making her own white dress for her upcoming high school graduation; Ermina is more of a party girl, with a growing fondness for boys. Neither sibling is very happy with Godfrey’s devotion to Father Divine’s commands, which include new names for them all and “Virginity” symbols on their clothes. (The sharp costumes are by Johanna Pan, with lighting by Anshuman Bhatia and sound by Broken Chord.)

The unexpected arrival of Sandra’s sister, Lily Ann Green (Sharina Martin), shakes things up; Aunt Lily, who they haven’t seen in years, is a fun-loving Communist who wears flashy, sexy outfits and enjoy drinking, dancing, and staying out late with men. “Ya like my suit?” she asks Ernestine. “I bought it on Fifth Avenue, sure did, to spite those white gals. You know how they hate to see a Negro woman look better than they do. It’s my own little subversive mission to outdress them whenever possible. Envy is my secret weapon, babies. If ya learn anything from your Auntie let it be that.”

Godfrey is especially appalled that Lily has shown up with suitcases, ready to move in to fulfill a promise she had made to look after the girls. Lily stands for everything Godfrey is now against — although she is quick to remind him that that was not always the case. After a personal crisis, Godfrey heads out in search of Father Divine, but he creates chaos when he comes back home with Gerte Schulte (Natalia Payne), a white German woman.

Crumbs from the Table of Joy is exquisitely rendered from top to bottom. Brendan Gonzales Boston’s living room set features Godfrey’s chair at the right, where he fastidiously writes down questions to send to Father Divine, the kitchen table at the left, and, against the back wall, the radio, which Godfrey believes is a container of sin except when he listens to Father Divine on Sundays. “Ain’t no use in having a radio,” Ermina says. “Might as well be a log, ’least we could burn it to keep warm.” The dressmaker’s dummy on which Ernestine sews her graduation gown serves as a stand-in for the late Sandra, a constant reminder of her loss.

Lily (Sharina Martin) seeks to fulfill a promise in Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Theatre Row (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Directed by Colette Robert (Weathering, Egress), the two-hour play (with intermission) proceeds at a graceful, relaxed pace, with plenty of room for the characters to develop and the narrative to evolve. Bowen (Long Day’s Journey into Night, If Pretty Hurts . . .) gives Godfrey a subtle vulnerability as the conflicted widower trying to find his path in life, while Martin (Round Table, The Extinctionist) injects energy and excitement whenever she’s onstage. Payne (Fairview, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills) is splendid as the persnickety interloper. Samuel (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Bernarda’s Daughters) is charming as Ermina, a teenager ready to burst out from her confining existence.

The centerpiece of the show is Ernestine, who is gorgeously portrayed by Bailey (The Book of Mormon, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies), a 2019 Syracuse graduate making her off-Broadway starring debut. Bailey instills the older sibling, who dreams about raising her station, with a soft, engaging tenderness. Several times she switches from her character in the play to her narrator/future self, explaining after a scene that it actually hadn’t happened that way: “At least I wish he had said that” or “Well, at least I wish she had,” she corrects, but she refuses to be held back by what might have been.

In this coming-of-age memory play, Nottage (Sweat, Mlima’s Tale, Intimate Apparel) touches on themes that will show up in her later works, from institutional racism, workplace inequality, and sociocultural change to the act of sewing itself; her great-grandmother was a seamstress in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Ernestine’s almost desperate desire to finish her graduation dress is not only a metaphor for the challenges her family faces but for the glorious career Nottage began stitching together with Crumbs.