this week in theater

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? CHERRY LANE REOPENS WITH DELIGHTFULLY WEIRD WEER

Mark brings Christina closer to him in Natalie Palamides’s Weer at the Cherry Lane (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

WEER
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $89-$169
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

One of my favorite theatrical moments of the year happened in Natalie Palamides’s outrageously funny and insanely inventive Weer. Mark is making a critically important phone call, and I desperately prayed for Christina to quickly return to the stage and answer it. I looked to the far corner, anxiously waiting on the edge of my seat, hoping she would pick it up — when it suddenly hit me that Christina was already there: Weer is a one-woman show in which Palamides is playing both roles, the right side of her body Mark, the left side Christina. Palamides, a trained improv clown, had me believing there were two fully embodied characters in the extraordinary ninety-minute satiric, deranged rom-com like no other. I rejoiced, so thoroughly in love with my reaction.

I went into Weer knowing absolutely nothing about it; I didn’t know who was in it or what it was about. And that made it all the more memorable. The run, which was extended several times at the newly refurbished Cherry Lane, is sold out, so I don’t mind sharing the details of my experience here (spoiler alert!), but if you’re planning on trying to get rush or standby tickets, don’t read on until after you’ve given it a shot.

The Pittsburgh-born Palamides won the Total Theatre Award at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Nate — A One Man Show, a big success on Netflix two years later. In the wildly unpredictable and participatory performance, Palamides wrestles with male toxicity as she portrays Nate, a gruff, hirsute dude who announces early on, “I guess I get to do whatever I want . . . to whoever I want . . . in this room.”

Weer takes place during a New Year’s Eve gathering in 1999, complete with worries that all hell might break loose at midnight, when Y2K threatens to destroy the world. But for ninety minutes, all hell does break loose onstage, as the narrative shifts to 1996, when Mark and Christina meet-cute, and then back to the party, where the couple faces several challenges. Palamides’s awesome costume (by Ashley Dudek) and over-the-top makeup feature a flannel shirt, a bushy mane, a beard and mustache, and chest hair on one side, a belly-revealing red knit top, long hair with colorful clips, jewelry, and a woman’s shoe on the other, positing Mark and Christina as old-fashioned gender stereotypes; he has a deep, gravelly, full-throated voice, while she has a softer, more compassionate tone.

Natalie Palamides plays both roles at the same time in Weer (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

Palamides, who also wrote and directed the show, expertly flips sides — or individual body parts — as Mark and Christina talk, kiss, dance, argue, shower, drive, and have sex on Gabriel Evansohn’s wonderfully scattershot set, which is filled with surprises that arrive with the pull of a rope or a step on an odd prop (designed by lucas a degirolamo). Word of warning: You will be provided with a plastic poncho if you’re in the first row, and not just because water might be sprayed.

There is no official script; the sturm and drang is all in Palamides’s head as she incorporates the audience into the controlled mayhem, mugging to the crowd, tossing out knowing glances, and asking a few people to join her onstage or speak from their seats. She has us eating out of her hand every step of the way, at least when we’re not practically rolling on the floor laughing. She has a ton of fun toying with the physical concept, sharing such self-reflexive dialogue as “She’s like my other half” and “Weer never gonna be separated like that again,” as well as the psychological approach, exploring the elements of masculinity and femininity in each of us.

Palamides, who does a lot of voice work on cartoons (Bob’s Burgers, Duncanville, Haunted Hotel) in addition to playing Mara in the Progressive insurance commercials, is irresistible as Mark and Christina, whether she is clothed or unclothed, baring her body and soul in uproarious ways. She also includes an apt Gen X soundtrack, with such songs as Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” (“If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks that suspect / They could never love anyone”), Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (“Well, the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’ / Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin’ / Didn’t make sense not to live for fun / Your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb / So much to do, so much to see”), and Pearl Jam’s emotive car-accident cover “Last Kiss” (“Oh, where, oh, where can my baby be?”).

The title, Weer, comes from how Mark’s family ridiculously pronounces the word deer as if they were Elmer Fudd — the hunted animal figures prominently in the show — and how both Mark and Christina are not able to exactly figure out their relationship through the years, often repeating to each other “Weer,” as in “We’re . . . ,” but unable to finish the thought.

I have to admit that when I first entered the Cherry Lane, I was extremely concerned. Purchased in 2023 by the film company A24, the theater has a smaller lobby area where ticket holders battle for space with diners waiting to go into the new, upscale Wild Cherry restaurant. There was a long, roped-off line for the restrooms, and a concession stand was selling popcorn and drinks as if we were seeing a movie. (Notably, it is now a for-profit venture where it previously was a nonprofit, making its location on Commerce St. rather apt.) Popcorn at the theater? The smell and noise had me on the brink of a conniption. Fortunately, Weer is so engaging, and the laughter so continuous, that those anticipated distractions melted away quickly, as the audience had no time to eat or drink. I do wonder what will happen during a quiet, dark drama, but that’s for another day.

Even the program gets in on the entertaining absurdities, with whimsical art, an advertisement in which Palamides offers relationship advice via email, and a spread that asks, “Whose side are you on?”

I know whose side I’m on.

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

PREACHING TO THE CHOIR: THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Kit Green leads a multitalented cast in disappointing North American premiere at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 2-14, $40-$165
www.armoryonpark.org

The continuing attempted reclamation of the longtime gay slur “faggots” continues with the North American premiere of Ted Huffman and Philip Venables’s parable The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, running at Park Ave. Armory through December 14. In this case, it’s a lost cause.

Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, about queerness and the British royal family, just received yet another extension at Studio Seaview. In September, Baryshnikov Arts Center presented Kevin Carillo’s Figaro/Faggots, a mashup of Larry Kramer’s satirical 1978 novel, Faggots, and Mozart and Da Ponte’s 1786 opera, Le nozze di Figaro. And in August, TheaterLab staged Topher Payne’s Angry Fags, an election tale that deals with queer stories in a post-Trump world.

A baroque fantasia with music ranging from folk to medieval to opera to dance, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions was adapted from writer Larry Mitchell and illustrator Ned Asta’s 1977 book, when the F-word in question was much more a part of rampant homophobia and gay-bashing; the fifteen-member cast says “faggots” about a hundred times in a hundred minutes, but that doesn’t necessarily make its use sting any less, depending on one’s history with it.

The performers are already congregating on Rosie Elnile’s wide open set as the audience enters the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, building a sense of community. On three sides of the neatly arranged platform stage are numerous unmatched chairs, a clothes rack, a few tables, and such instruments as a harp, a gong, a cello, and several pianos on wheels. The show begins with the following declaration, complete with surtitles projected on a small screen hanging from above:

“It’s been a long time since the last revolutions / and the faggots and their friends are still not free. / There still exists a faint memory of the past when the faggots and their friends were free. / The memory lives in the faggots’ bones. / It appears late at night when their bones are quietest. / When the memory visits them, the faggots know / that they must find each other in order to survive. / So while the men are sleeping, they emerge from the corners of the devastated city / and they go searching for other faggots in the hidden places: / in alleyways and abandoned piers and empty parks and unlit warehouses. / And there, in the moonlight, the faggots will enact the ritual of the brief encounter.”

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is based on a 1977 illustrated gay parable/manifesto (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The show is constructed like a healing ritual as the performers, all of whom participate in the storytelling and play an instrument, hold hands, hug, dance, form a circle, and offer warm, caring smiles to one another and the audience. Olivier Award–winning transdisciplinary artist Kit Green, wearing a series of tight-fitting, colorful gowns and skirts with high heels (the otherwise casual costumes are by choreographer Theo Clinkard), serves as a kind of host and narrator, leading the festivities, along with her right-hand colleague, Yandass, who stands out in a dynamic solo dance. The rest of the energetic, multitalented cast consists of soprano Tamara Banješević, accordionist Valerie Barr, plucked-string instrumentalist Kerry Bursey, cellist Jacob Garside, chamber musician Conor Gricmanis, woodwind doubler Rianna Henriques, soprano Mariamielle Lamagat, baritone Themba Mvula, pianist and music director Yshani Perinpanayagam, transdisciplinary artist Meriel Price, countertenor and multi-instrumentalist Collin Shay, baritone Danny Shelvey, and harpist Joy Smith.

The book was inspired by Mitchell and Asta’s time living in the Lavender Hill gay and lesbian commune outside of Ithaca that they helped found in 1970, partly in response to the Stonewall riots. “People in gay liberation tended to talk about [how] gay male culture of the 1960s really centered on ideas of isolation and loneliness, and this was going to be what gay communes solved,” Yale historian Stephen Vider says in the 2014 documentary short Lavender Hill: a love story.

Unfortunately, the various components don’t come together to form a cohesive whole, unable to bear the weight of such an underwhelming narrative and never capturing the joy in Asta’s black-and-white line drawings. The Faggots and Their Friends is a fable/manifesto that pits “the faggots” against “the men,” essentially all white cis males who live in and rule the land of Ramrod, led by Warren-and-his-Fuckpole. (Ramrod may have been named for the famed Greenwich Village gay leather bar, where three years after the book was published the West Street Massacre took place, in which a former transit cop shot eight men, killing two.)

The faggots, whose friends include the fairies, women who love women, and the queens, are kind, sweet, good-natured souls filled with empathy and compassion, while the men are corrupt, violent, mean-spirited villains who worship “papers” (money); there is no middle ground, no bad faggots, no admirable men. There is no nuance, too much telling and not enough showing, no dynamic flow or tension in the story and no growth in the characters despite there still being so much hate in America in 2025 amid the rollback of so many rights that were fought for, especially in the 1960s and ’70s.

Adapter and composer Venables and director Huffman, who previously collaborated on such projects as 4.48 Psychosis, Denis & Katya, We Are the Lucky Ones, and My Favourite Piece Is the Goldberg Variations, essentially remain faithful to the book, but what might work on the page falls flat on the stage, and the changes, including repeating phrases, are too didactic, preaching to the choir, overselling the points that are being made, as in the following missive, which was adjusted slightly from Mitchell’s original:

“They attacked anyone unlike them. / After the men triumphed, all that was other from them was considered inferior / and therefore worthy only of abuse and contempt and extinction. / The men decided who was to be hated: / those without cocks, / those whose skin didn’t match their own, / those who were hungry involuntarily, / those who came from other lands, / those who refused to be over-worked, / those who loved their own kind. / These are the ones the men decided to hate.”

They also cut out the characters in the book, such as Heavenly Blue, Loose Tomato, Mildred Munich, Pat, Lee, and Meredith, instead giving us nameless people we know nothing about — except for Green, who delivers a moving, fourth-wall-breaking improvisatory monologue about herself that is cut short by an extended singalong of a difficult melody with pedantic lyrics.

On opening night, there were noticeably few bursts of spontaneous applause from the audience, and there was only a scattered standing ovation at the end, even though it’s become de rigueur for everyone to get up and cheer. In fact, at one point in the show, Green actually told the audience to clap.

That’s never a good sign, particularly when you have the excited crowd already on your side from the very start.

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

TICKET GIVEAWAY: CANDACE BUSHNELL’S TRUE TALES OF SEX, SUCCESS, AND SEX AND THE CITY

Candace Bushnell is back for a special encore presentation of her one-woman show about her life and career (photo by Joan Marcus)

CANDACE BUSHNELL: TRUE TALES OF SEX, SUCCESS, AND SEX AND THE CITY
Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 West Sixty-Fourth St. & Central Park West
Friday, December 5, $34.45- $56.06 ($187.34 for VIP meet-and-greet), 8:00
ethical.nyc
candacebushnell.com

In December 2021, Candace Bushnell presented her one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City?, at the Daryl Roth Theatre, an endearing production in which Bushnell shared intimate details of her life and career, centering around the gargantuan success she has had with the creation of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the fictional characters on the HBO smash Sex and the City, based on her series of columns and 1996 book of the same name. The run was unfortunately cut short after Bushnell contracted Covid.

I called the play “a fab treat, a funny and candid New York story that everyone can relate to in one way or another, whether you are a fan of Sex and the City or have never watched or read it.”

Bushnell, who has also written such novels as Killing Monica, Lipstick Jungle, and Rules for Being a Girl (with Katie Cotugno), is now touring the show, renamed True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City; in the spring, she’ll be taking it to Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and California.

But first, the solo play is returning to New York City, where it all happened.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Bushnell, who is celebrating a birthday today (December 1), will be at Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on December 5 at 8:00 for a special one-night-only performance of True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City, and she has gifted twi-ny with a pair of prime tickets to give away for free to see the “real life Carrie Bradshaw.” Just send your name, phone number, and favorite Sex and the City character to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, December 3, at noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; one winner will be selected at random.

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

THE QUEENS OF QUEENS: IN SEARCH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Polish immigrant Renia (Marin Ireland) dreams of a better life in Martyna Majok’s reimagined Queens (photo by Valerie Terranova)

QUEENS
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 7, $109-$139
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Polish-born American playwright Martyna Majok tells stories that challenge the audience, taking risks as she explores the lives of the disenfranchised, the disabled, the underrepresented, and undocumented immigrants in search of the unreachable American dream. In Cost of Living, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize, it all came together without compromise; I wrote of the Broadway version, “The separate storylines merge at the end in an uneasy finale that acknowledges that we all encounter tremendously painful issues in life, regardless of our physical or psychological situations, which is further established during the curtain call.”

Her three other plays were not quite as successful despite intriguing setups and intricate narratives. About Ironbound, I noted, “The rest of the cast play their roles well, but their characters and tales are nowhere near as interesting and compelling as Darja’s, and they become somewhat quaint and repetitive as the show goes on and overdoes the obvious distinctions between rich and poor.” And I wrote that Sanctuary City “takes a head-scratching turn as the ending approaches, detracting from everything that came before it, which was powerful and moving.”

Queens, which originally ran at LCT3 in 2018 and is now at MTC’s New York City Center – Stage I through December 7 in a newly reimagined version, displays too many of the same issues; the play features characters and situations that you want to embrace and understand, but Martok and director Trip Cullman (Cult of Love, Six Degrees of Separation) are unable to weave their way through a web of fascinating ideas that don’t quite mesh. As with Ironbound and Sanctuary City, there’s a strong play in there that refuses to emerge.

A group of women seek common ground in MTC production at City Center Stage I (photo by Valerie Terranova)

Over the course of sixteen years, seven immigrant women move in and out of a crowded basement apartment in Queens, desperate to find a better life in America: the Belarusian Pelagiya (Brooke Bloom), the Polish Agata (Anna Chlumsky), the Polish Renia (Marin Ireland), the Ukrainian Inna (Julia Lester), the Afghan Aamani (Nadine Malouf), the Ukrainian Lera (Andrea Syglowski), and the Honduran Isabela (Nicole Villamil).

“Any regrets? In your life? In this building?” Inna asks Renia. Although she doesn’t want to admit it, Renia has plenty, having made choices that did not necessarily work out the way she expected. Inna punches her in the face before going inside and renting a room.

The basement is cluttered with clothing, a guitar, and other objects that are memories of those who came before, haunting Renia. (The effective set is by Marsha Ginsberg.) “What is your reason?” the memory of Pelagiya asks her. Aamani adds, “The reason you are here. Looking to live someplace away from the rest of your kind of people. What happened.”

The narrative then shifts to December 2001, when Renia has arrived in New York with little money in her pocket. Pelagiya wants to know what brought her there. “It’s no story,” Renia says. “It’s always story,” Pelagiya insists. Renia responds, “I need place I can stay. I come here. End of story.” Of course, it’s only the beginning of what turns out to be a dark, painful story. Even a somewhat pathetic party the women hold is tinged with fear and sadness. The appearance of the Honduran American Glenys (Sharlene Cruz) injects a burst of youthful energy, but it’s not enough to sustain the play’s 135 minutes (with intermission).

Queens does serve as a fascinating counterpoint to Bess Wohl’s dazzling Liberation, the current Broadway transfer about six diverse women who meet regularly in a rec center basement in Ohio in the 1970s to discuss the role of women in society, how it impacts their lives individually and what they can do to help change the status quo publicly; both shows delve into the relationships among women as well as mothers and daughters. The Queens women, however, have a different kind of baggage — obviously, they lack the relative privilege of the characters in Liberation, and face colossal odds stacked against them, coming from countries where women are still in search of freedom, fifty years after the Liberation women began changing America. Still, women’s search for the most basic of freedoms is the motor that drives Queens, even if the ride is bumpy and the destination uncertain.

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

BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH: THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS SETS WILDER TO MUSIC

The Antrobus family faces the weight of the world in The Seat of Our Pants at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS
Newman Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 7, $125
publictheater.org

Just because The Skin of Our Teeth won Wisconsin native Thornton Wilder his third Pulitzer Prize doesn’t mean the 1942 work isn’t a slog, dense with metaphor, festooned with oddball characters and bizarre scenarios, and obsessed with strange time-shifting interventions. I’ve seen two recent productions, an overstuffed mess at Lincoln Center in 2022 and an exemplary revival from TFANA in 2017, but even the latter required significant attention from the audience to sift through Wilder’s complex storytelling as he essentially shares a tale that is nothing less than an encapsulation of the survival of living creatures on this planet.

The quartet of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green attempted to turn The Skin of Our Teeth into a musical but eventually abandoned the project, as did the trio of John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joseph Stein. But now Obie-winning composer, bandleader, playwright, and librettist Ethan Lipton has taken on the challenge and delivered an exciting and fun, if still problematic, musical adaptation called The Seat of Our Pants, continuing at the Public’s Newman Theater through December 7.

The 160-minute show (with intermission) is divided into The Skin of Our Teeth’s usual three acts, the first during the Ice Age in Excelsior, New Jersey, complete with dinosaurs and humans getting along well; the second on the boardwalk in Atlantic City at a convention of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans; and the third back in Excelsior following a devastating war. Each act is introduced by an announcer (Andy Grotelueschen), singing with a mic stand and asking the audience to join in. He advises at the very beginning, “I want to tell you that the news is good / I want to shout it out in every neighborhood / But I can’t lie to you — although I had assumed I would / The world is ending, the world is ending.”

At the center of everything is the Antrobus family: the father (Shuler Hensley), a successful and important businessman; his wife (Ruthie Ann Miles), a kind and practical woman; and their two children, the promising Gladys (Amina Faye) and the less-than-promising Henry (Damon Daunno). Holding it all together is their maid, Lily Sabina (Micaela Diamond), who often addresses the stage manager and the audience directly, complaining about the play itself. When someone apparently misses a cue, Sabina repeats a key line, “Don’t forget — we made it through the recession-pandemic-wildfire-oligarchy by the seat of our pants. One more crisis like that and then where will we be?” Fitz, the stage manager, tells her to stretch it out because of technical issues, but Sabina is having none of it.

“I will not invent words for this show,” she argues. “I hate this show and every line in it. I don’t understand a word of it anyway — all about the troubles of the human race? Now there’s a subject for you. Besides, the author hasn’t decided whether it’s set back in the caves or in New Jersey today. And now some other guy’s added songs. Songs! Because that’s what it was missing.”

Humans and animals interact in New Jersey in inventive musical based on Thornton Wilder play (photo by Joan Marcus)

But it turns out that many of the songs, including “The World Is Ending,” “Sabina’s Suite,” “Stuff It Down Inside,” and “Ordinary Girl,” inject life into the narrative, accompanied by clever staging by director Leigh Silverman (Yellow Face, Grand Horizons), boisterous choreography by Sunny Min-Sook Hitt, witty orchestrations and arrangements by Daniel Kluger, Lee Jellinek’s gleeful, open set with the audience on two sides facing each other and the band on the other two sides, and costumes (by Kaye Voyce) that range from suburban casual to convention uniforms to a talking mammoth (Geena Quintos) and turkey (Bill Buell) duo to band outfits that match the flowery yellow wallpaper. The attention to detail in the costumes and the set changes are hilarious.

But, as Sabina repeated, “Don’t forget —” that this is based on The Skin of Our Teeth, so not everything makes sense, scenes go on too long, and there are too many songs. But watching the cast, led by wonderful performances by Grotelueschen (Into the Woods, Pericles) and Diamond (Parade, The Cher Show), having so much fun — even band member Allison Ann Kelly gets in on the action — is infectious.

I’m thinking that The Skin of Our Teeth is back in favor because of the current state of the country and the world amid wars, the immigration crisis, economic instability, political dysfunction, climate change, polarization, and general havoc and maelstrom. So why not turn it into a charming musical? Obie winner and Guggenheim fellow Lipton (We Are Your Robots, The Outer Space) has done just that.

“I am skin and bones, and I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth,” Job says in the Old Testament. With The Seat of Our Pants, we escape with much more.

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

TAKING THE INTITIATIVE: A MORE-THAN-WORTHWHILE FIVE-HOUR THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE

Else Went’s Initiative unfolds over more than five hours at the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

INITIATIVE
LuEsther Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 7, $109
publictheater.org

“Do you think we’ll do anything worthwhile with our lives? Is it even possible?” Clara (Olivia Rose Barresi) asks Riley (Greg Cuellar) about halfway through Else Went’s Initiative.

Experiencing the play is worthwhile, whether it’s the five-plus-hour performance, with three ninety-minute acts and two intermissions, or the six-and-a-half-hour one, with an added dinner break.

The show is set in “Coastal Podunk, California,” where a group of high school classmates explore first love, traumatic loss, and just about everything in between at the dawn of the new millennium as they begin to try to seek their place in an ever-more complex universe. In the early aughts, just after Y2K has not destroyed society, seven teenagers navigate adolescence, essentially without adults, on their own; we occasionally hear the garbled offstage shouting of two brothers’ unbalanced mother and the disembodied voices of Mr. Stone, a somewhat comforting English teacher, and Ms. May, a sensitive guidance counselor (both voiced by Brandon Burk). The tech age is upon the teens as they obsess over Super Nintendo and instant messaging on the internet — but only when they’re home at their computers. “The world is . . . tumultuous right now, and taking in too much information . . . can actually be dangerous,” Ms. May tells Clara, who responds, “It’s just that this is, like, the world, right? That I’m gonna inherit. Everyone’s always like ‘you’re the leaders of tomorrow,’ that sort of thing, but at the same time nobody wants to explain yesterday.”

Clara has returned to the classroom after several years of home-schooling by her religious parents. She is in love with Riley (Greg Cuellar), who admits to her he is gay but wants to remain her best friend. Clara seeks solace in Lo (Carson Higgins), a selfish, callous kid who is a star pitcher hiding something that happened between him and Riley at summer camp. Lo’s younger brother, Em (Christopher Dylan White), is a loner addicted to video games and unsure of how to return the affections of the sexy Kendall (Andrea Lopez Alvarez), the most progressive of the gang. Tony (Jamie Sanders), the least refined of them, has a crush on Kendall but becomes more of a bully after she doesn’t go for him and she becomes good friends with a shy, reserved new student, Ty (Harrison Densmore).

Over the course of four years, the teens discover things about themselves and each other as college approaches. Oh, and they spend a whole lotta time playing Dungeons and Dragons. Really. And it’s a blast to watch.

A continuing game of Dungeons and Dragons provides an exhilarating break during five-hour play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Initiative shouldn’t be compared to such other time behemoths as The Iceman Cometh, Strange Interlude, and the grandmaster of them all, Gatz. Written by Else Went and directed by Emma Rosa Went, who are married millennials who met in high school, the play, loosely inspired by their real lives, is performed by actors who are also millennials, which lends them an understanding of what their characters are going through; they might not look fourteen or fifteen, but they act it in a very empathetic, understanding way. In addition, several of them have been with the project since its start nearly ten years ago, giving them the opportunity to develop their portrayals.

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s large, open set features a row of lockers, two swings, a glowing abstract orb that represents a popular local tree (as well as the end of innocence), a bridge in the back, and a series of arches that evoke Greek drama; desks, beds, chairs, tables, benches, and other furniture are wheeled on- and offstage, and a hot tub emerges from beneath. S. Katy Tucker’s projections focus on stars, the galaxy of opportunities awaiting the teenagers — as well as the challenges they will face. Noticing shooting stars out the window, Lo says to Riley early on, “You ever think about dying?”

The cast is extraordinary, holding our attention for five hours, making us care what happens to each character, even during the D&D scenes, which allow them, and the audience, to temporarily break free of their inner turmoil. Christopher Akerlind’s lighting and Angela Baughman’s sound further engage us in the proceedings, along with Kindall Almond’s period costumes.

The play is about fifteen minutes too long, and the Wents seem unsure how to end it; I noticed three times I thought it should conclude and was sorry to see it continue, and there’s a coda that feels unnecessary, explaining elements we are already aware of that were better left unsaid. But it all flows with a tender naturalism before that — and is sure to make you remember moments from your own high school years, the good ones and the bad.

Initiative is a warm and engaging coming-of-age epic filled with universal truths about then and now. In a script note, Else Went writes, “This play is the letter to my younger self that I cannot receive. . . . It is apology and forgiveness, to myself, to my first friends, my first loves.”

It’s a letter that the audience is happy she sent.

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

LAST CHANCE: KYOTO AT LINCOLN CENTER

KYOTO
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 30, $140.50-$242.50
www.lct.org

If the prospect of sitting through Kyoto, a 160-minute play at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, set at a series of 1989–97 climate change conferences, doesn’t fill you with anticipation, consider Oslo, a nearly three-hour drama about the 1993 Oslo accords that began at the Newhouse in 2016, moved to the Vivian Beaumont, and deservedly won the Tony for Best Play. Kyoto is a worthy successor in the arena of political theater, a gripping behind-the-scenes thriller that commands our attention even as we are aware of the general outcome; decades later, there is still a battle over global warming, whether it’s man-made and a legitimate threat to the immediate future of the Earth.

Stephen Kunken is sensational as conniving American lawyer and lobbyist Don Pearlman, who serves as participant and narrator, speaking from beyond the grave; he died in 2005 at the age of sixty-nine, having built a controversial legacy. The play begins with him directly addressing the audience, explaining, “I think we can all agree on one thing: the times you live in are fucking awful. Everywhere you look there’s some kind of disagreement, something angry, something vicious, something acutely historic. There’s some maladjusted kid who takes a gun into his school. Countless limbless civilians blown up daily on your newsfeed. A CEO leaking blood on the sidewalk, dying, shrieking, shot. There’s food shortages, global pandemics, runaway inflation, culture wars, trade wars, real wars, possible third world wars, the death of democracy, collapse of the rules-based order and, on top of all of that, a planet that is literally burning down. And if you’re a guy like me looking at a time like now, the main thing you think is: man . . . the 1990s were freakin’ glorious.”

The show takes place on a circular stage that morphs from a scientists meeting in England in May 1990 to an IPCC Plenary Session in Sweden in August, the World Climate Conference in Geneva in November, talks in Virginia and the United Nations in 1991–92, Berlin in 1995, and ultimately the Kyoto International Conference Centre in December 1997 for COP3 (Conference of the Parties). Projections on a rear screen feature live video feeds and archival footage (of George W. Bush, Al Gore, and other players, designed by Akhila Krishnan).

Along the way, Pearlman butts heads with and attempts to manipulate an international collection of experts, based on real people, who have differing views on how to proceed, including Argentinian lawyer and conference leader Raul Estrada-Oyuela (Jorge Bosch), Austrian-born American Global Climate Coalition atmospheric physicist Fred Singer (Peter Bradbury), Swedish meteorologist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change founder Bert Bolin (Daniel Jenkins), American climate scientist Ben Santer (Jenkins), Saudi oil economist Mohammed Al Sabban (Dariush Kashani), Chinese professor Shukong Zhong (Feodor Chin), a Kiribati AOSIS spokesperson (Taiana Tully), German president Angela Merkel (Erin Darke), UK deputy prime minister John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts), Japanese environment minister Hiroshi Ohki (Rob Narita), British physicist John Houghton (Roberts), Tanzania professor Mark Mwandosya (Roslyn Ruff), the head of the US delegation (Kate Burton), and a UN Secretariat (Imani Jade Powers). While some fall in line, others are ready to fight, especially over the specific language in their assessments reports and draft protocols, arguing about such single words as appreciable.

Don is approached by the Seven Sisters, representatives of the world’s biggest oil companies, who want Don’s support — and get it through not-so-subtle threats. “We feel that without proper oversight, words like targets and timetables will be used to harm us,” one advises Don. Another adds, “To harm America, Don.” Don cancels his long-promised vacation with his wife, Shirley (Natalie Gold), and sets out to do the bidding of the Seven Sisters, breaking rules, undermining the conferences’ goals, and seeming to enjoy throwing wrench after wrench into the machinery.

“I know what people like you think of lawyers like me. You theater, artsy, liberal types who pay your bills in empathy,” he tells the audience. “But none of your concerns interest me. I’m the only one who can tell this story. Because I’m the only one who was there. Start to finish, I saw it all. Did it all. Fought for it all. And you may not like it all, but if you want to know it all, you can’t have it all your own way.”

Writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (The Walk with Little Amal) and directors Stephen Daldry (Skylight, Billy Elliot: The Musical) and Justin Martin (Prima Facie, Inter Alia) previously collaborated on the breathtaking, immersive hit The Jungle, which transformed St. Ann’s Warehouse into a Calais refugee camp. As in that production, in Kyoto they avoid preaching to the choir or making pronouncements on climate change, instead letting the action unfold while keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. In fact, some audience members have special chairs next to the characters around the circular stage and occasionally are engaged in conversation with them. (The set is by Miriam Buether, with business-style costumes by Natalie Pryce, lighting by Aideen Malone, crisp sound by Christopher Reid, and original music by Paul Englishby.)

There’s a lot of talk and scientific jargon, but it never gets boring. Tony nominee Kunken (Nikolai and the Others, Enron), who has been with the show through its original run at Stratford-upon-Avon and its subsequent move to the West End, is fully in charge of the proceedings, imbuing Pearlman with a balance between true believer, evil mastermind, and expert controller; you might not like or trust Pearlman, but you can’t take your eyes off him, as he in so many ways represents what is wrong with how important decisions that affect the entire world are made, then and now. Olivier nominee Bosch (Invencible, Speaking in Tongues) provides solid support as Pearlman’s archnemesis.

Nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Play, Kyoto is an engrossing and riveting story, a cautionary tale that says much about why we are in the mess we are today, with no clear way out.

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