this week in theater

ENDGAME

Clov (Bill Irwin) peers at Hamm (John Douglas Thompson) in Irish Rep adaptation of Beckett’s Endgame (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ENDGAME
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 9, $25-$95
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Queen’s Pawn Opening is one of the safest first moves in chess. But there’s not much that’s safe in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, which is named after the strategic maneuverings when there are only a few pieces left on the board and the match is approaching its conclusion.

The end is near from the very beginning of Endgame, as Clov (Bill Irwin) declares, “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.” That opening salvo leads to eighty-five minutes of thrilling confusion as four characters face the end of everything in a seemingly postapocalyptic world. “I can’t be punished any more,” Clov claims, since for him life is nothing but suffering.

Clov, who limps severely, is a servant toiling for the mysterious, blind Hamm (John Douglas Thompson), a regal, angry figure in a homemade wheelchair: a chair attached to a wooden platform with wheels on it. When we first see Hamm, his face is covered by a bloody handkerchief; beneath it, he wears steampunk goggles. A ratty blanket is wrapped around his lower half; he can’t see or walk.

To Hamm’s right is a pile of garbage and two metal trash cans, where his “accursed progenitors” reside, his father, Nagg (Joe Grifasi), and mother, Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), who have no legs. Thus, three of the characters cannot move on their own, and the fourth has major difficulty getting around. Even Hamm’s dog, a stuffed toy, is missing an appendage.

“Oh, I am willing to believe they suffer as much as such creatures can suffer,” Hamm says. “But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? No doubt. No, all is a — [yawns] — bsolute, the bigger a man is the fuller he is. And the emptier. . . . Enough, it’s time it ended, in the shelter, too. And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to . . . to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to — [yawns] — to end.”

Hamm, Clov, Nell, and Negg are living in some kind of end times, in a dingy basement dungeon that resembles a dark corner alley. Occasionally, Hamm calls for Clov to look through two small windows behind a brick wall in the back. To do so, Clov has to get out a step ladder, struggle uncomfortably to the wall, go up the ladder dragging one of his legs, and then peer through the gaps with a small telescope. On one side is a dim landscape, the other the sea, with nary a human being anywhere.

Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes) and Nagg (Joe Grifasi) share a laugh in Endgame (photo by Carol Rosegg)

However, when Clov aims the glass at the audience, he says, “I see . . . a multitude . . . in transports . . . of joy.” It’s one of several moments when the characters acknowledge that they are in a play with people watching them. Later, Clov threatens to leave, asking Hamm, “What is there to keep me here?” Hamm responds, “The dialogue.”

Hamm also makes references to “asides” and a “soliloquy”; when he calls for his gaff, Clov brings him the spear with a hook (used for fishing, sailing, and impaling), which resembles the vaudeville hook that unceremoniously pulls performers offstage when their acts go sour. In England, “gaff” is slang for “home,” something the four characters don’t exactly have. Scanning his surroundings, Hamm tells Clov, “My house a home for you. . . . But for Hamm, no home.”

The characters are like chess pieces, unable to move well on their own. “Take me for a little turn,” Hamm commands Clov, who awkwardly pushes him slowly around the room until Hamm barks, “Back to my place! Is that my place? . . . Put me right in the center!” as if he is the king on a chessboard demanding to be returned to his noble space, where he rules over nothing, the end in view, and not necessarily unwelcome. “The whole place stinks of corpses,” Hamm says. “The whole universe,” Clov adds. “To hell with the universe,” Hamm spits out. A few beats later, Clov declares, “The end is terrific!”

The cast is also terrific in this solid if not-quite-spectacular adaptation, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly. Longtime Shakespeare and August Wilson stalwart Thompson (Jitney, The Merchant of Venice) is majestic as Hamm in his return to the Irish Rep, where in 2009 he portrayed the title character in O’Reilly’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, spending much of the time on an oversized, red-draped throne. When Hamm calls out, “My kingdom for a nightman!,” it feels like a nod to Thompson’s numerous Bard performances, which do not include playing Richard III. However, the whistle Hamm keeps blowing grows ever-more annoying.

Hamm (John Douglas Thompson) sits center stage throughout Beckett adaptation at Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Tony winner Irwin (Old Hats, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is sublime as the put-upon Clov, a role that fits him to a T; Irwin is a vaudeville-style clown who has played Vlad and Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Hamm in a 2012 revival of Endgame in San Francisco as well as starring in his one-man show On Beckett, which was staged at the Irish Rep in 2018 and again (online) during the pandemic lockdown.

Chevannes (runboyrun/In Old Age, I’m Revolting) and Grifasi (Dinner at Eight, The Boys Next Door) are hilarious as Hamm’s parents, whose bins are just far enough apart to prevent them from kissing, an apt metaphor for the lack of connection that comes with the end (and with pandemics).

Charlie Corcoran’s dingy set evokes the end times, along with Orla Long’s costumes, which seem to decay right on the characters’ bodies. Michael Gottlieb’s lighting and M. Florian Staab’s sound enhance the dread, with fun props by Deirdre Brennan that ratchet up the humor. The eighty-five-minute play, which Beckett claimed was his personal favorite, debuted at the Royal Court in London in 1957 and was previously presented at the Irish Rep in 2005, directed by Charlotte Moore and starring Tony Roberts as Hamm, Adam Heller as Clov, Kathryn Grody as Nell, and Alvin Epstein as Nagg. (Epstein portrayed Clov in the show’s 1958 New York debut at the Cherry Lane and was also Nagg in the 2008 BAM revival, with Elaine Stritch as Nell, Max Casella as Clov, and John Turturro as Hamm.)

After explaining, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” one of the show’s most famous and enduring lines, Nell tells Nagg, “We laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.” There are plenty of laughs in this version of Endgame, even as we may be edging closer and closer to the apocalypse.

A CONVERSATION WITH F. MURRAY ABRAHAM

F. Murray Abraham will discuss his long career at National Arts Club virtual event (photo courtesy HBO)

Who: F. Murray Abraham, John F. Andrews
What: Virtual conversation
Where: The National Arts Club online
When: Tuesday, February 21, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: At the 2010 National Arts Club gala, the Shakespeare Guild honored actor F. Murray Abraham with its Gielgud Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts, calling the Pittsburgh-born, El Paso–raised Syrian American actor “one of the most versatile artists of our time.” Among those celebrating him were Tom Hulce, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Oskar Eustis, and Michael Feingold.

Over a six-decade career onstage and small and big screen, Abraham has accumulated one Oscar, two Obies, one Grammy nod, three Emmy nominations, and other accolades with stellar performances in Amadeus, Homeland, The White Lotus, Uncle Vanya, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and so many more productions. On February 21 at 6:00, the eighty-three-year-old Abraham, who lost his wife of sixty years, Kate Hannan, this past November, will discuss his long, wide-ranging career, in conversation with Shakespeare Guild president John F. Andrews. The special National Arts Club virtual event is free with advance RSVP here.

THE WANDERERS

Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Sophie (Sarah Cooper) share a rare fun moment in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE WANDERERS
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 2, $91-$174
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

“There’s no remaking reality,” Nancy remembers her father saying to her in Philip Roth’s Everyman. “Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”

Roth’s career and writings about Jewish parents and children are pivotal in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers, which opened last night at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre. The play is almost too literary for its own good: Marion Williams’s set consists of about a dozen piles of books on the floor, a long library-style table, and several back walls completely covered in open books, their pages pleading to be read; some of the characters enter and leave through gaps in the walls, as if they’re walking in and out of novels. Kenneth Posner’s lighting often casts the books on the wall and the floor in heavenly glows, including a neon blue. The scenes unfold in chapters with such titles as “Marriage,” “Children,” “Boredom,” “Destruction,” and “Fiction.”

The Wanderers, a name that evokes the forty years the Jews spent in the desert searching for the Promised Land after escaping slavery in Egypt, goes back and forth between 1973–82 and 2015–17, primarily in Brooklyn. Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is a dour but extremely successful and self-absorbed writer, having won two National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize (as did Roth); among his popular tomes are The Theory of Milk (as in a mother’s nurturing?) and Orphan. His wife, Sophie (Sarah Cooper), is considering writing a second novel but she’s tentative because her first book, published ten years earlier, was poorly reviewed. Abe’s parents, Esther (Lucy Freyer) and Schmuli (Dave Klasko), were Satmar Jews living in Williamsburg; Sophie is biracial and half Jewish (on her father’s side).

After giving a book reading at which Hollywood superstar Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes) — a nod to Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Cheever — sat rapt with attention right up front, Abe is contacted by the glamorous actress over email; she’s starring in an adaptation of Roth’s Everyman, and the two kick off a flirtatious online friendship. Initially, Abe reads the emails out loud off his laptop by himself (or to Sophie), but soon he and Julia are both onstage, as if involved in face-to-face conversations. The more time he spends with Julia, the less time he has for Sophie and their two (unseen) kids.

Esther (Lucy Freyer) and Schmuli (Dave Klasko) prepare to comsummate their arranged marriage in Roundabout production (photo by Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, some forty years before, Esther and Schmuli are commencing their life together through an arranged marriage; as the babies begin coming, Esther imagines a life where she has more choice, where she is not restricted by the draconian Hasidic rules, which are particularly fierce and limiting on women. As a child, Esther would sneak off with her best friend to read books in the library, and as a mother she wants her children to read books other than the Torah, but it is forbidden.

The parallels between Esther and Schmuli’s marriage and Abe and Sophie’s increase as The Wanderers heads to its final chapters, even if we are well aware of certain conclusions. “I was seventeen when I realized I was going to marry Abe,” Sophie explains in her opening monologue. “I was almost forty when I realized I would leave him.”

Listening to characters pontificate about art and the creative process, whether writing or acting, can get didactic and pretentious, and Ziegler (Boy, Actually) is guilty of that while also recognizing it. “Okay, I know you hate hearing my dreams —” Sophie divulges. “When did I say that?” Abe responds. “It’s the look on your face when I start to tell one,” she says, the same look audience members get when a show becomes preachy. But Ziegler is able to work her way around that with other dialogue that is subtly powerful. After telling Abe her dream, Sophie admits, “And when I woke up, you were gone.” He explains, “I couldn’t sleep so I went for a run.” She says softly, “No . . . that’s not what I meant.”

Hollywood superstar Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes) checks her phone while Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) pines for her (photo by Joan Marcus)

Barry Edelstein’s (The Underpants, The Misanthrope) direction tends toward the languid as actors walk onstage, talk, then walk offstage, except for Thomas (Golden Age, The Submission), who when not in a scene is watching it from the sides, taking notes for his next book. Unfortunately, Abe is such an unpleasant character that being in his presence is a downer; when he declares, “People hate me. . . . They’re offended by my very existence,” we understand why. Cooper, an author (100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, How to Be Successful without Hurting Men’s Feelings) and stand-up comic who gained notoriety for her TikTok videos in which she lip synced to statements by Donald Trump, is strong in her off-Broadway debut; the show would have benefited from more of her and her character, who is more intriguing than the others.

Holmes (All My Sons, Dead Accounts) brings a sweet innocence to her portrayal of the captivating Hollywood star, wearing fashionable white outfits that make Julia an angelic figure. (The costumes are by David Israel Reynoso.) Freyer (Romeo & Juliet, Malefactions) and Klasko (Gordy Crashes, King Lear) are effective in roles that are becoming all too familiar (and are all too real), a Hasidic wife who wants more out of life but is trapped by the suffocating intolerance of her husband and community.

Ultimately, The Wanderers is an homage to Roth, almost to a fault, as Ziegler features quotes from his books, right from the opening dialogue, when Sophie tells the audience, “Abe loved to read to me. Mostly his own writing, but also passages from his favorite novels; once, at a Foot Locker, he recited the last lines of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth over and over. ‘And he couldn’t do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? Everything he hated was here.’” It’s hard to compete with that.

CORNELIA STREET

Norbert Leo Butz heads a strong cast in Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

CORNELIA STREET
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 5
atlantictheater.org

It’s a problem we know all too well: beloved New York City restaurants closing because of financial issues, primarily rising rents. During the pandemic, dozens and dozens of dining establishments, from Beyoglu, Blue Smoke, the ‘21’ Club, and Feast to Jewel Bako, Lucky Strike, the Mermaid Inn, and Mission Chinese, shut their doors because of rent as well as food costs and supply chain issues.

But it doesn’t take a worldwide health crisis to affect a restaurant’s longevity. In January 2019, the Cornelia Street Café, a West Village treasure since 1977, closed over rent increases. “I am sad to say that I am losing my oldest child,” cofounder Robin Hirsch wrote. “Cornelia has brought me both joy and pain, and it is with a broken heart that I must bid her adieu.”

Tony and Olivier winner Simon Stephens was inspired by the Cornelia Street Café in writing Cornelia Street, a rousing yet intimately touching musical that opened last night at Atlantic Stage 2. It is not specifically about the restaurant and downstairs performance venue that was located on Cornelia St. between Bleecker and West Fourth Sts., but Stephens spent time at the café in 2018 doing research for the work, which features music and lyrics by American Music Club founder Mark Eitzel; the two have previously collaborated on Marine Parade and Song from Far Away.

The show is set in the present day inside Marty’s Café, a local haunt that has been on Cornelia St. in the West Village for decades. The building is about to be put up for sale, so Marty and his longtime chef, Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz), are preparing to convince the Realtors and investor Daniel McCourt (Jordan Lage) that their restaurant is worth keeping. While Marty is extremely concerned about the balance sheets, the Jersey City-born Jacob thinks that a menu revamp is the way to go, consisting of higher-end dishes with classier ingredients: venison ravioli, pizza with Spanish chorizo, omelets with porcini mushrooms.

Jacob has been working at Marty’s for twenty-eight years; he and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), who is having trouble at school, live above the café. Philip (Esteban Andres Cruz) is the waiter/bartender, a struggling actor having difficulty getting auditions.

Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) takes a closer look at his daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), in world premiere at Atlantic Stage 2 (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Three regulars come to the café to eat and/or drink nearly every day: John (Ben Rosenfield), a sweet, innocent computer scientist in his late twenties; Sarah (Mary Beth Peil), a retired opera singer who might be able to see the future; and William (George Abud), a perpetually nasty taxi driver and dealer who is always looking over his shoulder.

Jacob is shocked by the unexpected arrival of Misty (Gizel Jiménez), the daughter of an old girlfriend who he helped raise for a time. Misty is broke, alone, and angry, so Jacob gives her a job and lets her sleep in Patti’s room.

When Jacob is offered an opportunity to make some fast cash, relationships grow more complicated and trouble looms. As Sarah says somewhat facetiously, “There is a patisserie on the corner of Carmine and Sixth that is selling Edie Sedgwick cupcakes. This is a city that has started to eat itself.”

Scott Pask’s welcoming set makes the audience feel right at home, as if we are sitting at our own tables at the café. The wooden bar is at stage left, a few round tables stage right, and a window at the back that reveals the dark, narrow street outside. Linda Cho’s costumes are basic café wear, comfortable outfits, although Jacob’s concerts tees (the Ramones, Ziggy Stardust) spark a contrast with William’s flashy $240 shirt.

As opposed to being an all-out musical, Cornelia Street is more of a play with songs. Stephens’s (Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) book is smart and thorough, although there are two key moments that very well could have gone the wrong way but he rights the ship in time. Eitzel’s music is based in pop with lovely orchestrations by John Clancy, featuring Alec Berlin on guitar, Kirsten Agresta-Copley on harp, Gina Benalcazar on trombone, Marcos Rojas on tuba, Emma Reinhart on reeds, and Michael Ramsey on percussion and triangle. Part of the band is visible onstage, while the rest is nearly hidden off to the sides.

John (Jordan Lage) looks on as Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) and Misty (Gizel Jiménez) go at it in Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

The choreography, by former Alvin Ailey standout dancer Hope Boykin (Beauty Size & Color), is playful and appropriate, helping define who the characters are and what they want out of life. Each actor moves to their own groove, from a sweet shuffle to an elegant twist. No one is trying to tear the roof off the house, which matches the tempo of the narrative; there is no excess, a meal served with just the right ingredients.

However, Eitzel’s lyrics are a letdown, too often getting caught up in clichés even when successfully developing the characters and their relationships with one another. “So I’m saying this with a loving heart / Don’t be clever just be smart / Get A’s in science get A’s in art / And you will own the world,” Jacob assures Patti. “Loving an angel is bad / For your liver / For them nothing gets old / But the love of an angel nothing is better / In their arms you don’t feel the cold,” Sarah declares. One of the only times I lost focus was when Jacob tells himself, “If there’s a chance / I’m gonna take it / And if there’s a chance / I’m gonna make it,” which made me think of the late Cindy Williams and the theme song from Laverne and Shirley.

Tony-nominated director Neil Pepe, the Atlantic’s artistic director who has helmed such productions as Hands on a Hardbody, American Buffalo, and Stephens’s On the Shore of the Wide World, guides it all with expert precision; the characters don’t break out into song, stopping the play’s progression, but instead seamlessly continue the plot.

The excellent cast is led by two-time Tony winner Butz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Fair Lady), who plays Jacob with a gruff, heartfelt soul; you can’t take your eyes off him when he’s onstage (which is virtually the entire 140-minute show, with intermission). Jiménez (Miss You Like Hell, Tick, Tick . . . Boom!) is appealing as the dark, mysterious Misty, Rosenfield (The Nether, Love, Love, Love) is adorable as the uncomplicated John, Tony nominee Peil (A Man of No Importance, Anastasia) is a delight as the lovely Sarah, and Lena Pepe, Neil’s daughter, is impressive in her off-Broadway debut.

On February 13 at 7:00, the Atlantic hosted the special event “Stories from the Cornelia Street Café,” an evening of songs and stories with Hirsch, Stephens, and Eitzel. We might not have the café itself anymore, or so many other cherished restaurants, but we do have this terrific show to satiate at least part of our thirst and hunger.

NYC INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue kicks off New Ohio Theatre’s seventh and final NYCITFF

NYC INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
February 16-19 in person, February 20-26 streaming, passes $35-$50, individual screenings $14-$20
newohiotheatre.org

There will be a melancholy cloud hovering over New Ohio Theatre’s seventh NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival (NYCITFF); this iteration will be its last, as founding artistic director Robert Lyons announced earlier this week that the company will cease operations at the end of the current season after thirty years of presenting experimental and cutting-edge theater and film.

“The decision is the result of a confluence of factors, including my intention to step down as artistic director, the shifting landscape and dynamics of the field, and increased financial pressures on the organization,” Lyons wrote in a statement. “The board and I believe theater organizations have their own natural life spans, and felt the time was right for New Ohio to step aside and make space for the next generation of theater-makers and producers. We believe this is an important moment for new ideas, new energy, and new models for the indie theater scene.”

The final NYCITFF takes place February 16-19 at New Ohio’s longtime home on Christopher St., with encore streamings of all films February 20-26. The festival consists of six features, thirty-four shorts in four programs (“Non-traditional Storytelling,” “Dating Drama,” “Everything Changes,” “Friendship Bonds”), two workshops (“Infinite Space: Making Theater in Virtual Reality” with Jocelyn Kuritsky, Alex Basco Koch, and Meghan Finn, and “Staging Film: Tricks of the Trade, Merging Stage and Film” with Kevin Laibson), and a reception and a happy hour.

The opening night selection on February 16 at 8:00 is Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue, a drama set on Whidbey Island where a man (Chris Stack) is haunted by a lost love (Soule); the cast includes two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, Godless) and off-Broadway favorite Dale Soules (I Remember Mama, The Capables). In-person screenings conclude February 19 at 4:00 with Rat Queen Theatre Co and Colt Coeur’s The Goddamn Looney Tunes, a multimedia musical about a teen punk band.

Director Reid Farrington gives instructions to Rafael Jordan on set of Mendacity (photo by Miguel Aviles)

The work that perhaps best encompasses the intersection of film and theater is Mendacity, which uses real political protests as a way into exploring lies through a production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Connelly Theater, starring Lindsey Graham as Maggie the Cat (Adam Patterson), the United States of America as Brick (Rafael Jordan), AOC as SisterWoman (Jennifer McClinton), Tr*mp as Big Daddy (Kevin R. Free), and Jared Kushner as Big Mama (assistant director Laura K Nicoll). When Brick tells Maggie, “I can’t be trusted anymore,” it takes on multiple meanings. Married director and editor Reid Farrington and writer Sara Farrington have been melding film and theater for more than fifteen years, in such original and complex shows as The Passion Project (Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc), Gin & “It” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope), and CasablancaBox (Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca), so Mendacity is a natural next step for them. (In addition, Sara Farrington’s Untitled Ukraine Project was part of New Ohio’s “Now in Process” earlier this month.)

NEW PLACE PLAYERS: OTHELLO

Desdemona (Alanah Allen) and Othello (Eliott Johnson) share an intimate moment in Bard tragedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

OTHELLO
Casa Clara
218 East Twenty-Fifth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 25, $29-$99
newplaceplayers.org

One of the myriad wonderful things about Shakespeare plays is how malleable they are, offering plenty of opporunity for productions to get creative by twisting, turning, and reshaping how the plot unfurls even when using the exact original dialogue. And it doesn’t have to be done in large venues with star-studded casts; smaller, more intimate versions by lesser-known companies can deliver new insights into narratives you thought you knew so well.

Such is the case with New Place Players’ splendid adaptation of Othello in Casa Clara, a former Kips Bay foundry built in 1848 that is now a four-story town house where photographer Clara Aich lives and works. The maximum audience size is only fifty, about half sitting in unmatched chairs on either side of the central, horizontal stage area, with the other half sitting in seats on both sides of the long, narrow entryway.

The walls are filled with drawings, empty frames, and ancient, classical-looking bas-reliefs Aich has collected on her travels around the world, giving the play a dramatic, old feeling, as it takes place during the Ottoman-Venetian Wars of the early 1570s. The atmosphere is enhanced by Shawn Lewis’s spare set, highlighted by a few rooms in balconies at the front and back of the “stage,” Jennifer Paar’s period costumes, and a chamber music score performed by Anna Bikales on harp, Daniel Keene on lute and gong, and music director, composer, and sound designer Flavio Gaete on viola, consisting of Renaissance consort music, including works by father-and-son Elizabethan court composers John and Robert Johnson, contemporaries of Shakespeare’s. The lighting is by Ethan Steimal, who incorporates two skylights.

Director Makenna Masenheimer and cultural competency consultant Ianne Fields Stewart waste no time establishing good vs. evil and exposing the racism of that era. Between 1596 and 1601, several Privy Council documents called for the expulsion and trading of “blackamoores.” In the opening scene, Iago (Conor Andrew Hall) appears wearing a black cape that evokes cartoon villain Snidely Whiplash, an animated mashup of wicked slavemaster Simon Legree and the dastardly Hollywood generic villain who ties damsels to train tracks. Roderigo (Nathan Krasner) is the wealthy white accomplice who does Iago’s bidding because he lusts after Desdemona (Alanah Allen), who is in love with Iago’s boss, military hero Othello (Eliott Johnson).

Bianca (Rose Kanj) and Cassio (Matthew Iannone) have at it in Othello at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Iago pretends to be an honest and loyal man, but he is a deceiving master manipulator determined to take Othello down, at least in part because of rumors that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia (Helen Herbert), who is Desdemona’s faithful attendant. “I follow him to serve my turn upon him,” Iago tells Roderigo. He also acknowledges, “I am not what I am.”

Roderigo and Iago alert Brabantio (Matthew Dudley), Desdemona’s rich politician father, that he must save his daughter from Iago’s arms at that very moment. “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe,” Iago advises Brabantio. “Awake the snoring citizens with the bell, or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.” What could be worse than having a grandchild who is part Black?

A showdown ensues in which Desdemona, a vision in a white gown, asserts her love for Othello, whose “otherness” is increased by his wearing a North African turban associated with Muslims. But Iago is not about to let a public declaration of love get in the way of his evil plans. He tricks Emilia into helping him foster the belief that Desdemona and Iago’s chief ensign, Cassio (Matthew Iannone), are having an affair. Cassio, meanwhile, is spending more and more time with Bianca (Rose Kanj), a courtesan who has fallen in love with him, but Cassio’s career comes first.

The players also include the forthright Lodovico (Topher Kielbasa), kin to Brabantio and Desdemona; the chief magistrate, the Duke of Venice (Ryan Joseph Swartz); Montano (Aaron McDaniel), the governor of Cyprus; Gratiano (Dudley), Brabantio’s brother; and various messengers, officers, senators, and townspeople. No matter what happens and what anyone says, Iago is determined to ruin Othello and Desdemona, doing whatever is necessary to keep his nefarious scheme intact.

New Place Players will perform Othello through February 25 at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)

New Place Players have previously presented immersive versions of The Tempest at the 3 West Club in Midtown and the Players by Gramercy Park, Twelfth Night at the Casa Duse Supper Club in Park Slope, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Casa Duse, Villa Lewaro in Irvington, and the Players. Their Othello is worth seeing just for the environs; during the pandemic, I watched a stream of Group.BR’s 2018 Inside the Wild Heart, a live performance filmed at Casa Clara that you could now navigate through online using the interactive Gather Town platform, allowing you to experience different parts of Clarice Lispector’s play in different rooms at your own pace. It made me yearn to be in the actual space.

Othello is best enjoyed by sitting in the main staging area, where the actors make eye contact with audience members and come as close as possible physically without actually touching them. The cast got off to a slow start the afternoon I saw it; the production was delayed because two of the actors were out sick, leaving the company to scramble. Understudy Swartz took over the roles of Brabantio and Gratiano and was a standout; stage manager Kyra Bowie did extra duty by reading for the Duke of Venice on an iPad, her purple boots beautifully anachronistic.

The closeness between the actors, who are trained in the Lecoq movements, and the audience created an unspoken camaraderie, as if we were fellow citizens familiar with the characters and setting. The story unfolded with a clear, precise progression, the misogyny, classism, and racism unmistakable but not heavy-handed.

I’ve seen three productions of Othello since 2016: Shakespeare in the Park with Corey Stoll as Iago, Chukwudi Iwuji as Othello, and Heather Lind as Desdemona, Sam Gold’s adaptation at New York Theatre Workshop (Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, Rachel Brosnahan), and a noh version at Japan Society, in addition to watching Orson Welles’s 1952 film (Micheál MacLiammóir, Welles, Suzanne Cloutier).

The show at Casa Clara was the first time I truly felt how terribly the women are treated, how they are assumed to be strumpets and whores who can’t make their own decisions and think for themselves. Iago, in full beard and mustache, repeats to Brabantio several times, “Put money in your purse,” as if women can be bought like chattel. Othello himself is all too quick to listen to Iago and distrust his devoted wife. We might have come a long way in four-hundred-plus years, but misogyny, classism, and racism are still all too real in 2023.

LUCY

Ashling (Lynn Collins) and Mary (Brooke Bloom) share a fun moment in Lucy (photo by Joan Marcus)

LUCY
Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Monday – Saturday through February 25, $57-$97
www.audible.com

Writer-director Erica Schmidt’s latest work, Lucy, is one of the best plays of the season, a gorgeously rendered story about a single mother, a nanny, and a young girl. Her Mac Beth, a stirring adaptation of the Shakespeare classic reimagined with an all-female cast set at a girls school, was one of the best productions of 2019, and equally feminist. Schmidt now moves from the bloody battles of medieval Scotland to twenty-first-century upscale urban domesticity, but Lucy nevertheless references classic themes.

The nanny is a staple of literature, theater, and film, from Mary Poppins, Mrs. Doubtfire, Maria Reiner (The Sound of Music), and Becky Sharp to Nanny McPhee, Nanny Schuester (The Nanny Diaries), Anna Leonowens (The King and I), and Mrs. Baylock (The Omen). In the 1965 Hammer horror flick The Nanny, Bette Davis starred as the thoroughly wicked title character who remains unnamed; just calling her Nanny is frightening enough.

Lucy, which continues through February 25 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, opens with pregnant fortysomething Mary (Brooke Bloom) interviewing Ashling (Lynn Collins) to take care of Mary’s six-year-old daughter, Lucy (Charlotte Surak), and soon-to-be-born son, Max. Mary is desperate; she’s a radiologist with a complicated work schedule and is due to give birth in a week. Mary wants to find the right fit, but she overlooks a few possible warning signs during her meeting with Ashling. Both the character and the audience do a double take at several things Ashling says, but nothing seems too ominous.

“I get it. You need a coparent,” Ashling declares after Mary describes her hours. “Someone who is here when you’re at work.” Mary responds, “Who I pay to be here. A nanny,” asserting that she is the mother.

Mary hires Ashling — who is fifty-eight but looks at least two decades younger, and acts even younger than that — and at first everything appears to be great. The nanny goes above and beyond the call of duty, especially with Lucy, who immediately adores her. At one point Ashling is swinging Lucy around as they both sing to Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” belting out, “I should not be left to my own devices / They come with prices and vices / I end up in crisis (tale as old as time) / I wake up screaming from dreaming / One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving / ’Cause you got tired of my scheming / (For the last time) / It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me / At teatime, everybody agrees / I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror / It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.”

Mary (Brooke Bloom) watches as Ashling (Lynn Collins) and Lucy (Charlotte Surak) dance to Taylor Swift (photo by Joan Marcus)

As time passes, there are more cracks in the mirror as Mary begins noticing some curious behavior by Ashling, who has a feasible explanation for everything. Is Ashling gaslighting Mary? Is Mary so overworked and stressed that her imagination is getting the best of her? It all comes to a head, leading to an utterly thrilling finale.

Lucy takes place in Mary’s kitchen/dining room/living room, with shelves filled with books, cabinets with dishes and bottles of wine, and a comfy couch and chair. There is no television anywhere — “I don’t do screens,” Mary tells Ashling. Mary’s bedroom is off stage right, while a hallway at the center back leads to Lucy’s and Max’s rooms. (The clean, mostly white, instantly Instagrammable set is by Amy Rubin.) Mary primarily wears tastefully minimal but obviously expensive black and cream outfits, while the tattooed Ashling is draped in layers of swirly boho prints, every arm and finger sporting inexpensive arty silver jewelry, courtesy costume designer Kaye Voyce.

The creepier the plot gets, the more Cha See’s lighting casts long, eerie shadows, while Justin Ellington’s sound includes plenty of crying and screaming.

Mary (Brooke Bloom) and Ashling (Lynn Collins) face off in Audible production at the Minetta Lane (photo by Joan Marcus)

Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys) has her finger on the pulse of the relationships between Ashling and Mary, Mary and Lucy, and Lucy and Ashling, letting each play out in its own way. The underlying fear Mary has about having hired the wrong nanny is palpable; at least at the start, most mothers are terrified of leaving their children with a complete stranger, references or not.

Bloom (Everybody, Cloud Nine) embodies that fear, evoking the young mother in Rosemary’s Baby, who thinks the devil is after her infant. Collins (Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice) exquisitely captures the many mysteries of Ashling, who harbors plenty of secrets. Schmidt exploits our misgivings by imbuing Ashling with some tantalizing witchlike tendencies. When Mary asks her what she likes most about child care, Ashling proclaims, “It keeps me young!” and it’s an easy leap to the age-old idea that she is somehow sucking the youth from her charges. (Mary responds, “That’s funny. My daughter is definitely making me old. Fast.”)

When Mary asks if she ever wanted her own kids, Ashling replies, “I have kids!” There’s also a perfume that could be a magic potion, a curious substance around Max’s crib, and other subtle touches that make us question whether Ashling is really up to something or if it’s Mary’s paranoia. Mary might be a radiologist who peers inside people’s bodies, but that doesn’t mean she can assess what’s going on in Ashling’s head.

Most of Schmidt’s work has a strong feminist undercurrent, and Lucy is no exception, with Mary a doctor who cannot easily afford a nanny and who gets only four weeks’ maternity leave, which she has chosen not to fight in order to keep her job.

Finally, it’s intriguing that the play is named after the six-year-old girl, who is splendidly portrayed by Surak (Waitress) but has the least amount of stage time. It’s as if Schmidt is telling us that Lucy is the future while also hearkening back to the first fossil skeleton of a human ancestor ever discovered, which archaeologists named Lucy.

In the five years it has been producing plays at the Minetta Lane, Audible has concentrated primarily on one-person shows starring women, including Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, Lili Taylor in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, Jade Anouka’s Heart, Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie, and DeLanna Studi’s And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears. (Men have been represented by Aasif Mandvi’s Sakina’s Restaurant and Billy Crudup in David Cale’s Harry Clarke.) In addition, Laurie Gunderson’s two-character The Half-Life of Marie Curie told the inspiring story of Madame Curie and her friendship with fellow physicist Hertha Ayrton.

Lucy, which passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, follows in that tradition while also reaching the next level. As Swift sings in “Midnights”: “Ladies always rise above.”