this week in theater

BroadwayCon 2022

Who: Anthony Rapp, LaChanze, Andrew Barth Feldman, Carolee Carmello, Ben Cameron, Erin Quill, Fredi Walker-Browne, Julie White, Telly Leung, Ilana Levine, Jacqueline B. Arnold, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Vanessa Williams, Judy Kuhn, Lesli Margherita, Nik Walker, Ryann Redmond, Thayne Jasperson, Hillary Clinton, more
What: BroadwayCon 2022
Where: Manhattan Center, 311 West Thirty-Fourth St., and the New Yorker Hotel, 481 Eighth Ave.
When: July 8-10, day passes $80, general pass $200, gold pass $425, platinum pass $1,250
Why: BroadwayCon is back with an in-person edition taking place July 8-10 at the Manhattan Center and the New Yorker Hotel, right by Madison Square Garden and Penn Station and just a few blocks south of the Theater District. This year’s edition includes panel discussions, interviews, live performances, podcasts, a cosplay contest, workshops, photo and autograph sessions, singalongs, meetups, and celebrations of and inside looks at such shows as A Strange Loop, Six the Musical, Chicago, POTUS, Dear Evan Hansen, Beetlejuice, Thoughts of a Colored Man, Kimberly Akimbo, SpongeBob SquarePants, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Kite Runner, Assassins, and Hamilton.

Among those participating at the three-day festival are Anthony Rapp, LaChanze, Carolee Carmello, Ben Cameron, Erin Quill, Julie White, Telly Leung, Vanessa Williams, Judy Kuhn, Lesli Margherita, and Hillary Clinton, talking about such topics as racial and gender diversity, disability, understudies, anxiety, body positivity, and Stephen Sondheim.

Below are select highlights for each day:

Friday, July 8
Ensemble screening, with Telly Leung, 10:00 am, followed by a talkback at 11:20, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel

BroadwayCon 2022 Opening Ceremony, with Ben Cameron, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 12:40

Here’s to the Ladies: Hillary Rodham Clinton Live at BroadwayCon, with LaChanze, Julie White, and Vanessa Williams, moderated by Hillary Clinton, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 1:00

Making a Living and Having a Life in Theatre Production, with Jameson Croasdale, Mary Kathryn “MK” Blazek, Rebecca Zuber, Lauren Parrish, and Gary Levinson, moderated by Naomi Siegel, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 2:20

Lights, Overture, Stage Fright! Breaking Down Performance Anxiety, with Kira Sparks, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 3:40

POTUS is one of several Broadway shows that will be featured at BroadwayCon (photo by Paul Kolnick)

Saturday, July 9
Black Lives Matter on Broadway, with T. Oliver Reid, Britton Smith, Emilio Sosa, Michael Dinwiddie, and Lillias White, moderated by Linda Armstrong, New Yorker Hotel Grand Ballroom, 10:00

Broadway Livestreaming: Expanding the Reach of Live Theatre, with Timothy Allen McDonald, Sean Cercone, Luke Naphat, Tralen Doler, Nathan Gehan, and Jen Sandler, moderated by Joshua Turchin, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 11:20

Getting the Show Back on the Road: The Pandemic and Its Impact on Touring Broadway, with Jacob Persily, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 2:20

Paul Gemignani and Sondheim’s Musical Legacy, with Margaret Hall and Meg Masseron, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel, 3:40

BroadwayCon Cabaret, with special secret guest, hosted by Ben Cameron, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 5:00

Sunday, July 10
Cheers to Understudies: The Broadway Cast Live!, with Amber Ardolino, Mallory Maedke, Tally Sessions, and Lauren Boyd, hosted by Ben Cameron, New Yorker Hotel Grand Ballroom, 10:00

Body Liberation on Broadway, with Amara Janae Brady, Shantez M. Tolbut, and Evan Ruggiero, moderated by Stephanie Lexis, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 10:00

Directors on Debuts, with Zhailon Levingston and Tina Satter, moderated by Zeynep Akça, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel, 1:00

Tell Me More! Tell Me More!, special guests TBA, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 2:20

Broadway Anecdotes II: Golden Age Gossip, with Kenneth Kantor, Joshua Ellis, and Mimi Quillin, moderated by Ken Bloom, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 5:00

MEET MISS BAKER: CHAINS

Charley (Jeremy Beck) and Lily Wilson (Laakan McHardy) face a turning point in Chains

CHAINS
The Mint Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $35-$80
minttheater.org
www.bfany.org

As live theater slowly emerged from the long pandemic lockdown, I waited with bated breath for the return of the Mint, one of New York City’s genuine treasures. For the last two years, the Mint, founded in 1992 to resurrect lost or forgotten plays, has been streaming recordings of such relatively recent successes as Conflict, Katie Roche, and Women without Men. Artistic director Jonathan Bank and the troupe are now back with its first live presentation since 2019, an exquisitely rendered adaptation of Elizabeth Baker’s 1909 working-class drama, Chains.

The second part of the Mint’s “Meet Miss Baker” series, which began with The Price of Thomas Scott, Chains was originally scheduled for the spring of 2020; the production finally opened on June 23, and the events of the past two years make it feel excitingly fresh and timely, as if it were written yesterday.

During the lockdown, many New Yorkers were overcome with wanderlust, heading to less-dense areas of America, sometimes for good. As the coronavirus crisis declined — it is still with us, of course, one example of which are the vaccine checks and masks required to enter Theatre Row, where Chains continues through July 17 — people across the country began reexamining their lives and careers, suddenly leaving their jobs, even without other prospects, what has become known as the Great Resignation. According to a Pew Research survey released this past March, “Low pay, a lack of opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work are the top reasons why Americans quit their jobs last year.” Also cited was a better balance between work and family responsibilities.

All of those aspects are at play in Chains, which is elegantly directed by Jenn Thompson with a cunning wit — she also helmed Conflict and Men without Women — and impeccably performed by a nine-person cast, most of whom portray characters who are chained down in one way or another, whether they realize it or not, primarily by capitalism and social convention.

When Fred Tennant (Peterson Townsend), a kind lodger renting a room from Charley Wilson (Jeremy Beck) and his devoted wife, Lily (Laakan McHardy), announces that he is emigrating from England and starting a new life in Australia, friends and neighbors are mostly shocked and stunned. Tennant is single and on a career path to become head clerk at his firm.

“I’m sick of the whole show. I can’t stand it any longer,” Tennant tells Charley, who, a moment later, asks, “Do you mean you are just going out because you want a change?” Tennant replies, “That’s about it. I’ve had enough of grind.” Charley points out, “Well, perhaps you’ll get grind somewhere else.” Tennant responds calmly, “It’ll be a change of grind then. That’s something.”

Elizabeth Baker’s Chains is gorgeously revived by the Mint (photo by Todd Cerveris)

The Wilsons’ big, boisterous neighbor, Morton Leslie (Brian Owen), comes bounding over the fence of Charley’s small backyard vegetable garden and chimes in, believing Tennant’s a fool for giving up his cushy gig. “He’s going to throw it away!” he proclaims. “And then I suppose he’ll be out of work over there, and we shall be hearing of the unemployment in the Colonies! It’s just this sort of thing that makes a man a Conservative. It’s what I call getting off the ladder and deliberately kicking it down.” Ironically, Leslie has a problem with the garden ladder as he tries to get home.

Lily’s twenty-two-year-old brother, Percy Massey (Avery Whitted), is in love with Sybil Frost (Claire Saunders) and wants to marry her, while Lily’s sister, Maggie (Olivia Gilliatt), is being courted by wealthy but dull-as-a-doornail widower Walter Foster (Ned Noyes). When Charley’s coworker, Thomas Fenwick (Christopher Gerson), shares some unfortunate news with him, Charley starts thinking that maybe it’s time for him to give up the daily monotony, the awful commute, the nonstop grind and head to Australia for better opportunities, then send for Lily after he’s settled. The men’s discussion is eerily contemporary, centering on “low pay, a lack of opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work,” exactly what the Pew study exposed workers complaining about more than a century later.

Charley asks his wife, “Don’t you ever get sick of it? It’s jolly hard work sometimes.” But Lily seems content with being a homemaker, following the predictable lower-middle-class suburban lifestyle, as if there was nothing else to consider.

Learning of Charley’s wanderlust, Lily’s parents (Anthony Cochrane and Amelia White), who are just fine with the status quo, are surprised and disappointed. Mrs. Massey offers, “Suppose we all stopped work when we didn’t like it? A pretty muddle the world would be in. Charley is forgetting there is such a thing as duty. . . . We’ve got to do our duty, and the more cheerfully we can do it, the better for ourselves and everybody else.” Mr. Massey argues, “Father was a plumber, and if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.”

The only one who recognizes what Charley is going through is Maggie, a free spirit who appreciates that there is more than the never-ending cycle of school, work, marriage, kids, retirement. She tells Charley, “I can never understand why a man gets married. He’s got so many chances to see the world and do things — and then he goes and marries and settles down and is a family man before he’s twenty-four.” Charley replies, “It’s a habit.” Maggie adds, “If I were a man I wouldn’t stay in England another week. I wouldn’t be a quill-driver all my life.”

Puffing away on his pipe, Charley has a major decision to make that affects more than just him, a choice that many in the audience can relate to.

Wealthy but dull Walter (Ned Noyes) woos Maggie (Olivia Gilliatt) in Chains (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Chains switches between two locations: the Wilsons’ sitting room in Hammersmith, with a fireplace on the right, the kitchen table at the center, and a parlor in the back, and the Massey living room, with a comfy couch, a cozy nook, and a piano. Both sets are gorgeously designed by John McDermott; one of the Mint’s trademarks is its consistently beautiful stage design and its magical change of sets, which is usually done during intermission but here is saved for the beginning of the second act so everyone can experience its wonder. The Edwardian costumes are by David Toser, with lighting by Paul Miller and sound by M. Florian Staab. To further Charley’s sense of captivity, there are repeated images of small chains on the Wilsons’ wallpaper.

Beck, who starred in two of the Mint’s best recent productions, Conflict and Hindle Wakes, is sublime as Charley, bringing a Daniel Craig–like quality to the role of a man who abruptly decides that he needs more out of life, unsatisfied with his current circumstances and unhappy that it’s precisely what’s expected of him. When he looks at Tennant’s map of Australia, we are examining it with him, as if searching for our own possibilities of seeking something new.

The rest of the cast is superb, led by McHardy (The Wolves, Mac Beth) in her off-Broadway debut as the gentle, doe-eyed Lily and Gilliatt (Pushkin, Mother of the Maid) as her far more adventurous sister. Owen (Dog Man: The Musical, Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery) nearly shakes the house as Leslie, towering over everyone else.

Thompson’s (The Gravedigger’s Lullaby, Abundance) direction is richly harmonic, allowing former stenographer Baker’s words to sing. It’s a song many of us have listened to, and many more are terrified of or reject outright. At one point, Fenwick says to Charley, “What can I do? Stay, of course — what else is there?”

What else is there? As Baker (Edith, Partnership), in her first play, reveals, there’s a whole world out there to be explored, onstage and off. And as we now know, sometimes it takes a pandemic for people to break out of the chains of their self-imposed bondage.

SNOW IN MIDSUMMER

Classic Stage Company’s Snow in Midsummer bites off more than it can chew (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

SNOW IN MIDSUMMER
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $70
www.classicstage.org

As an aficionado of Asian ghost stories — I’ve seen more than my fair share of horror flicks from Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines — I was looking forward to Classic Stage Company’s Snow in Midsummer, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s adaptation of Guan Hanqing’s thirteenth-century Yuan dynasty drama The Injustice to Dou Yi That Moved Heaven and Earth. The play was originally presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017 as part of its Chinese Translations Project; CSC’s version, directed by Zi Alikhan, can’t find its way out of Cowhig’s overstuffed, undercooked narrative. While the central ghost story, involving grave injustice, works well, every aspect of the rest of the tale is overwhelmed by myriad social justice elements that just keep coming from every direction.

Three years earlier, in the remote factory town of New Harmony in Jiangsu Province, Dou Yi (Dorcas Leung) was executed for a crime she claims she did not commit. “If we still live on a planet that hates injustice, / Snow will fall from the clouds and shield my remains. / May that snow be the last water that falls on New Harmony until / Justice is brought to Dou Yi,” she proclaims, awaiting her death. “Officers — / Do you see the white flag flapping overhead? / If I am innocent, / Not a drop of hot blood will spill onto the green earth or / Stain my clothes, no matter how many bullets pierce this flesh / My blood will fly towards the Blue Sky and / Stain the white flag flying above. . . . I promise you — / It is the hottest time of the year, / But soon snow will tumble down like cotton / And New Harmony will experience the wrath of a drought for three years. / They say Heaven has no sympathy for the human heart — / The Blue Sky will answer my prayers. / Mother! / Wait until snow falls in June and drought lasts three years. / Only then will my innocent soul be — ”

In the present, a drought is threatening the very existence of the town. Tianyun (Teresa Avia Lim), a single mother who grew up in a nearby village, has returned to the area and purchased the factory previously owned by Master Zhang (Kenneth Lee), who Dou Yi was accused of murdering. Tianyun rose from teenage migrant to assembly line employee to operating the largest synthetic flower company in the country. As Master Zhang’s son, Handsome Zhang (John Yi), prepares to propose in public to Rocket Wu (Tommy Bo), his true love, Tianyun’s six-year-old daughter, Fei-Fei (Fin Moulding), warns, “Don’t propose during Ghost Month! It’s an invitation for spirits to visit!” Nurse Wong (Wai Ching Ho), who runs the local bar, replies, “Wasn’t the Cultural Revolution supposed to wipe out rural superstition?”

Things are set in motion when the ghost of Dou Yi appears to Fei-Fei and they declare in unison, “Heart of Sorrow, Tears of Suffering. How will you redeem my three-year rotting bones? / No rain and not an inch of grass has grown. Injustice killed this girl of youth and spring. No one on earth has avenged me. / Earth — why have you only mourned but not fought for me?” As Tianyun and Fei-Fei attempt to find out what really happened to Master Zhang, they are continually thwarted by citizens of a town who have a lot to hide, from Mother Cai (Wai Ching Ho), Nurse Wong, Doctor Lu (Kenneth Lee), and Judge Wu (Lee) to a trio of factory workers (Paul Juhn, Julian Leong, and Alex Vinh), the local police, and Handsome himself.

There are several creepy, eerie moments involving Dou Yi as she seeks her revenge, but they get lost amid a sea of social justice tropes immersed in overdramatized and overacted melodrama. Instead of focusing on the misogyny and abuse that led to the execution of Dou Yi and its extensive cover-up, Cowhig and Alikhan throw in police and government corruption, homophobia, illegal organ harvesting, income inequality, class and gender differences, deforestation, the death penalty, generational trauma, climate change, and other issues. This kitchen-sink approach drowns a play that otherwise has a solid core. The spare sets by dots are effective in their simplicity, and Jeanette Yew’s lighting maintains an otherworldly quality. Leung (Miss Saigon, Hamilton) and Lim (Junk, The Alchemist) stand out among the uneven cast, who are dressed in Johanna Pan’s unflattering costumes.

Perhaps Snow in Midsummer would have been more successful if it had been significantly cut down from its outstretched two-and-a-half-hour length (with intermission) and did not try to tackle most of the world’s current problems all at once; I could see it working well in a kind of modern-day Kwaidan omnibus, concentrating on Dou Yi’s tragic but, unfortunately, universal story.

THE RISE AND FALL, THEN BRIEF AND MODEST RISE FOLLOWED BY A RELATIVE FALL OF . . . JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME AS GLEANED BY A SINGLE READING OF HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE MONTHS EARLIER

Joe Cordaro and John Harlacher star in Timothy Haskell’s semibiographical play about Jean Claude Van Damme (photo by Nathaniel Nowak)

THE RISE AND FALL, THEN BRIEF AND MODEST RISE FOLLOWED BY A RELATIVE FALL OF . . . JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME AS GLEANED BY A SINGLE READING OF HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE MONTHS EARLIER
The Pit Loft
154 West Twenty-Ninth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday – Sunday through July 17, $24.99 with discount code JCVD22, 7:30
thepit-nyc.com

I’ve seen so many meticulously researched plays about real-life figures and situations, wondering what is actually true and what has been tweaked — or just plain made up — for dramatic effect, that Timothy Haskell’s new work is a breath of fresh air. The title explains exactly what you’re in for: The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier. Haskell checked out Jean Claude Van Damme’s relatively lengthy Wikipedia entry, then, a few months later, wrote a play based only on what he could remember, without doing any further reading or fact checking. “Absolutely no research was put into learning anything about the subject at hand,” we are told early on. “It was all gleaned from one cursory glance at his Wikipedia page, and just general knowledge of the man based on tabloid headlines.”

The result is a breezy, extremely funny look at fame, ambition, gossip, and celebrity, gleefully codirected by Haskell, set designer Paul Smithyman, and puppet master Aaron Haskell (Timothy’s brother). For about an hour at the Pit Loft, John Harlacher and Joe Cordaro, standing behind makeshift podiums, share the not-necessarily-true story of the Muscles from Brussels. Between them is an angled table with slots where they place cardboard cutouts on Popsicle sticks of Van Damme and people who have been part of his personal life and professional career — or have nothing to do with him. Behind them is a small “screen” on which they project photos and a few choice film clips, including a fantastic moment from 1984’s Breakin’ with Van Damme as an uncredited background extra.

Both actors play multiple roles, but the hirsute Harlacher (Bum Phillips, Dog Day Afternoon) is mainly the narrator, meandering through his overstuffed, disorganized notebook, while Cordaro (The Foreigner, The Tiny Mustache) is mostly the former Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, reacting to what the narrator says and occasionally taking center stage to act out various scenes, including JCVD’s infamous barfight with Chuck Zito.

Timothy Haskell and the narrator make no bones about what went into the scattershot though chronological show, which has a proudly middle school DIY aesthetic. Introducing the Breakin’ clip, the narrator explains, “There’s a pretty fun YouTube remix our author was lucky enough to stumble upon while limply researching another play about the movie Breakin’ that some guy did that looks like this.” The two actors dance along with JCVD, after which the narrator rhetorically asks, “Isn’t that fun?” Yes it is!

Repurposed action figures play a pivotal role in JCVD show at the Pit Loft (photo courtesy Aaron Haskell)

Commenting on JCVD’s battle with drugs, the narrator admits, “As for Jean Claude, he did that stupid thing in Breakin’ and then toiled away some more and did a ton of bullshit and got all kinds of high. Not on life either, brother. The man was a straight up smack head if smack head means you did lots of cocaine which the author is now not sure it does. Fed up and high as a Romanian glue-huffer he decided to make some bold moves. He decided to case Joel Silver’s office. Joel Silver was the producer of Road House starring Patrick Swayze that was later turned into a hit play by Timothy Haskell who thought after that he could do serious work but was wrong.”

As JCVD’s career rises and falls and rises and falls and so on, we (sort of) learn about his siblings, his wives, his martial arts mentors and heroes, his perhaps partially fabricated tournament record, and his hotly anticipated confrontation with Steven Seagal. We go behind the scenes of such films as Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Universal Soldier, and Timecop. Oh, and there is plenty of fighting, carried out by Cordaro and Harlacher with repurposed action figures, designed by Aaron Haskell, battling it out on a long, narrow fencing piste at the front of the stage. It’s like watching two young friends playing in the basement with their GI Joe dolls — the ones with kung fu grip, of course.

As a founding member of Psycho Clan, Haskell has presented such immersive horror experiences as This Is Real, Santastical, and I Can’t See. He has also directed James and the Giant Peach, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, Road House: The Stage Play, and the upcoming graffiti drama Hit the Wall.

In an April 2014 twi-ny talk about his interactive Easter-themed eggstravaganza, Full Bunny Contact, I asked him, “What happened to you as a child? Based on the kinds of shows and events you write, produce, direct, and create, there had to be some kind of major trauma involved.” He replied, “Nothing unusual. My mother says she dropped a toy Ferris wheel on my head, and anytime I do something unusual she blames herself for dropping a heavy toy on my noggin.” That could explain this new work as well.

The show concludes with an extended monologue by JCVD, who begins by warning, “I know what happened. I am me. I don’t need to read a Wikipedia page to know who I am. I did, however. Thoroughly. Ya know, for safety.”

There’s nothing safe about The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier. But there is a whole lot that is hilariously entertaining. And that person sitting behind you, laughing even harder than you, just might be Timothy Haskell himself.

CASCANDO

Pan Pan’s Cascando takes cloaked and hooded audiences through the Village (photo by Ian Douglas)

CASCANDO
NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Pl.
Through July 3, $35
nyuskirball.org
www.panpantheatre.com

“What are they!?” a young woman shouted on a recent early evening in Washington Square Park as we marched in a slow procession, more than a dozen people wearing long black cloaks and hoods. She wasn’t the only one confused by what was happening. As we took off from NYU Skirball, we had to wind past graduating seniors in purple robes celebrating with friends and family; hopefully they didn’t take our silent appearance as a sign of impending doom.

A few months ago, I experienced Chasing Andy Warhol, Manhattan-based Bated Breath’s immersive production in which a guide led an audience of no more than sixteen on a walk through Greenwich Village, encountering different manifestations of the Pop artist that played out in vignettes on the streets, where passersby could stop and watch and take photos and video even if they didn’t quite know exactly what was going on, though the multiple Warhols were obvious.

I went on a very different kind of theatrical walk last week, Dublin-based Pan Pan theater’s immersive, mysterious adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s early 1960s “radio piece for music and voice,” Cascando. We gathered, put on robes and headphones (under our hoods), and sauntered in formation as we listened to two thick, Irish-accented voices read Beckett’s words. In 1936, Beckett had written a love poem with the same title, which American poet Robert Pinsky, in comparing it to William Butler Yeats’s “Adam’s Curse,” explained in Slate, “More passionate than dismissive, too dire and skeptical to be read at weddings, yet ardent, these poems are explicitly in conflict with writing itself, yet embrace it.” Just like Warhol’s films, such as Kitchen and Empire, where narrative storytelling conventions are hard to find, much of Beckett’s work, including Cascando, does not incorporate standard plotting devices either. In essence, Cascando is about the art of storytelling itself, but only as Beckett can tell it.

The half-hour tale is told by Dan Reardon as Opener, Andrew Bennett as Voice, and Jimmy Eadie as Music, as Beckett equates voice and music, the former about meaning, the latter feelings. The first words we hear are Opener saying, “It is the month of May . . . for me,” as if it might not be for the rest of us. That is about as specific as the piece gets as it deals with starting and finishing, getting lost, vague memories, an abstract sense of place, and what goes on inside one’s head. The words spoken by Bennett lead right into Eadie’s tense, dramatic instrumentals, sometimes with extended breaks that can make you wonder whether the narration is over. (Marcel Mihalovici composed the original score.)

In their book The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, editors Seán Lawlor and John Pilling elucidate that the term “‘cascando’ is (rarely) used in music to distinguish a diminuendo in volume and/or tempo,” particularly as the end approaches. The repetitive text, however, doesn’t really have a beginning, middle, or finale, or at least not in the way theatergoers generally expect.

In a low panting, Voice begins, “—story . . . if you could finish it . . . you could rest . . . sleep . . . not before . . . oh I know . . . the ones I’ve finished . . . thousands and one . . . all I ever did . . . in my life . . . with my life . . . saying to myself . . . finish this one . . . it’s the right one . . . then rest . . . sleep . . . no more stories . . . no more words . . . and finished it . . . and not the right one . . . couldn’t rest . . . straight away another . . . to begin . . . to finish . . . saying to myself . . . finish this one . . . then rest . . . this time . . . it’s the right one . . . this time . . . you have it . . . and finished it . . . and not the right one . . . couldn’t rest . . . straight away another . . . but this one . . . it’s different . . . I’ll finish it . . . then rest . . . it’s the right one . . . this time . . . I have it . . . I’ve got it . . . Woburn . . . I resume . . . a long life . . . already . . . say what you like . . . a few misfortunes . . . that’s enough . . . five years later . . . ten . . . I don’t know . . . Woburn . . . he’s changed . . . not enough . . . recognizable . . . in the shed . . . yet another . . . waiting for night . . . night to fall . . . to go out . . . go on . . . elsewhere . . . sleep elsewhere . . . it’s slow . . . he lifts his head . . . now and then . . . his eyes . . . to the window . . . it’s darkening . . . earth darkening . . . it’s night . . . he gets up . . . knees first . . . then up . . . on his feet . . . slips out . . . Woburn . . . same old coat . . . right the sea . . . left the hills . . . he has the choice . . . He has only—” Opener responds, “And I close. . . . I open the other.” Then music.

Much of the rest of the text continues that pace and language, a story about a story about Woburn that opens and closes and veers off into puzzling tangents that occasionally relate to the procession. “Don’t lose him . . . follow him . . . waiting for night . . . night to fall,” Voice says, as if reminding us to stay right behind the person in front of us (our own personal Woburn, who is described as wearing the “same old coat”?) as, indeed, dusk approaches. “It’s in his head,” Opener points out, and of course, this is all happening inside our heads. The back-and-forth language is reminiscent of what the anonymous protagonist declares in Beckett’s 1953 novel The Unnamable: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

Poetic procession passes people who are perplexed, take pictures, or are simply nonplussed (photo by Ian Douglas)

As we go on, getting closer to the conclusion and are ambling determinedly through Greenwich Village back to Skirball, Opener says, “Then the return. Where? To the village.” During the journey, a few people stopped and took pictures or video, some cast sideways glances, curious about who we were and what we were doing, but mostly passersby just ignored us, as if there was nothing strange or different about our ceremony. One graduate laughed, put his purple robe over his head, and joined in for a few steps. Fortunately, no one threw rocks, which creator and director Gavin Quinn said had occurred when Cascando was presented in Düsseldorf. (It has also been performed at the Barbican London, the Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, the Galway International Arts Festival, and the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin.)

I highly recommend fully immersing yourself into the walk and embracing designer Aedín Cosgrove’s costume; if you bring a purse, pocketbook, or shoulder bag, make it a black one, and try to keep it inside the cloak to avoid any bits of color forming a distraction. Also, even though you’ll be outside, wear a black mask to cover much of whatever part of your face is visible to others; it will add to the anonymity and enigma of it all as passersby ponder whether you’re in a demonic cult or en route to an Eyes Wide Shut sex party.

Beckett himself called Cascando “an unimportant work but the best I have to offer. It does I suppose in a way show what passes for my mind and what passes for its work.” Pan Pan, which has staged such other Beckett concoctions as Endgame, Quad, Embers, and All That Fall in addition to adaptations of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, Aldous Huxley, and Oscar Wilde, has put together a unique pilgrimage with Cascando, a personal journey as well as an homage to Beckett, a melding of the interior and the exterior, held in an area of New York City bubbling over with life, promise, and hope.

SigSpace: EMANCIPATED STORIES

Who: Quiara Alegría Hudes, Sean Ortiz, Sean Carvajal, Dominic Colón, Kenyatta Emmanuel, Suave Gonzales, Renee Goust, David Zayas, Kenyatta Emmanuel, Renee Goust, Jamie Maleszka, more
What: Installation and pop-up events
Where: Signature Theatre, the Pershing Square Signature Center Lobby, 480 West Forty-Second St. at Tenth Ave.
When: June 29 – July 24, Tuesday – Sunday, noon – 5:00, free
Why: Last summer, the Signature Theatre reopened with the immersive installation The Watering Hole, which included Vanessa German and Haruna Lee’s “This Room Is a Broken Heart,” part of which involved choosing a postcard designed by an incarcerated individual and sending a note to someone living behind bars. This summer the Signature has taken that a step further by teaming with the Fortune Society and Emancipated Stories to present an installation focusing on words and art by incarcerated people. Founded in 1967, the Fortune Society’s mission is “to support successful reentry from incarceration and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities . . . through believing, building lives, and changing minds.” Emancipated Stories was started by prison reform activist and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes and her cousin Sean Ortiz, who spent ten years behind bars, as a way for incarcerated people to have their voices heard through handwritten letters that are shared on Instagram and in special installations.

Hudes, the Signature’s premiere writer-in-residence and author of such works as In the Heights, Water by the Spoonful, Daphne’s Dive, and Miss You Like Hell, explained in a statement, “The thing that’s fun and safe about theater is that the basic rule of engagement is one of listening. The fundamental contract is: I’m going to listen, I’m going to pay attention. Similarly, what we’re seeking to create is a communal space of sharing and openness. Within this installation and the events we’ve planned, the lines between audience and performer are more porous; it’s more of a gathering, and there’s no fourth wall, and we put the original letters in people’s hands. When you hold someone’s piece of paper and it’s handwritten — and you feel the grooves — it’s like holding someone’s hand. It’s an instant connection that’s part of the liveness of it. Surprising heart doors come open in these moments.”

“The Fortune Society is thrilled to be in community and collaboration with Signature Theatre and Quiara Alegría Hudes to help bring this insightful and moving project to life,” Fortune Society director of creative arts Jamie Maleszka added. “The goal of Emancipated Stories is to center and celebrate the full humanity of community members who are currently and formerly incarcerated and to grow meaningful connections through storytelling. The project perfectly aligns with our mission to build people, not prisons, and invest in more just collective futures.”

“SigSpace: Emancipated Stories” will be open in the theater lobby Tuesday through Sunday from June 29 through July 24, from noon to 5:00; admission is free. In addition, there will be four pop-up events, free with advance RSVP, featuring actors, artists, activists, musicians, writers, and members of the Fortune Society activating the installation, which was designed by Yazmany Arboleda with Emmanuel Oni, through music, discussions, readings, and writing letters in response to those from incarcerated individuals.

Wednesday, June 29
Kick-off, with actors David Zayas and Sean Carvajal, artist and activist Suave Gonzales, and Felix Guzman and Daniel Kelly of the Fortune Society, hosted by playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, free with RSVP, 5:00 – 7:00

Wednesday, July 13
Music Night, with composer Kenyatta Emmanuel, singer-songwriter Renee Goust, writer and actor Dominic Colón, and others, hosted by Quiara Alegría Hudes, free with RSVP, 5:00 – 7:00

Sunday, July 17
Family Day, with Fortune Society community members and actor Sean Carvajal, moderated by Fortune Society director of creative arts Jamie Maleszka and Quiara Alegría Hudes, free with RSVP, noon – 2:00

Wednesday, July 20
Quiet Writing Time, free with RSVP, 5:00 – 7:00

FAT HAM

Marcel Spears stars as a different kind of Hamlet in James Ijames’s Pulitzer-winning Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

FAT HAM
Anspacher Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through July 31, $50-$80
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

There’s no “To be or not to be” in James Ijames’s rousing, spirited adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Hamlet. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, continuing at the Public’s Anspacher Theater through July 31, there’s no “To thine own self be true,” no “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” no “Good-night, sweet prince,” no “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” But to give you the tasty flavor of Ijames’s big queer Black take on the familiar tale, his Hamlet, known as Juicy (Marcel Spears), says, “Ah, there’s the rub” only after Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) shares the secret to smoking pork.

The ninety-five-minute show, coproduced by the National Black Theatre and the Public, takes place in the backyard of, according to the script, “a house in North Carolina. Could also be Virginia, or Maryland or Tennessee. It is not Mississippi, or Alabama or Florida. That’s a different thing all together.” The time is “a kind of liminal space between the past and the present with an aspirational relationship to the future that is contingent to your history living in the south. All that to say . . . I’m writing this play from inside the second decade of the twenty-first century. This world aesthetically sits anywhere in the four to six decades preceding the current moment.”

At its core, the story echoes the original. Juicy’s father, the king (Claudius; Jones), has been murdered by his brother, Rev, who then married his brother’s widow, Tedra (Gertrude; Nikki Crawford). Juicy hangs out with his best friend, Tio (Horatio; Chris Herbie Holland). Everyone assumes that Juicy is destined to wed his supposed true love, Opal (Ophelia; Adrianna Mitchell). Her very protective brother, Larry (Laertes; Calvin Leon Smith), is in the military and suffers from PTSD. Tedra’s best friend, Rabby (Polonius; Benja Kay Thomas), Larry and Opal’s mother, loves drinking and celebrating the Lord.

The play opens with Juicy on the back porch of a suburban home helping prepare for a barbecue party for Rev and Tedra’s bethrothal as Tio watches porn on his phone. “Your daddy ain’t been dead a week and he already Stanley steamering your mom. Cold,” Tio says. “Stanley steamering your mom . . . ,” Juicy quizzically repeats. Tio clarifies, “Eating your momma’s box? Doing the nasty with your mom? That better?” This is not your grandparents’ Hamlet.

Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) leads a prayer before family and friends partake of barbecue in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

A few minutes later, Juicy is visited by the ghost of his father, Pap, dressed in white, eerie smoke drifting around his neck and shoulders. Pap wants his son to avenge his death — and to stop eating candy bars unless he wants to get “the suga,” which runs in the family. Pap orders Juicy to split Rev open: “Make his thighs into hams. His intestines into chitlins. Pickle his feet and boil his head down to a skull! Crisp up his belly and dry out his balls and grind them up into a fine powder. Lay that all out on the table, invite over your nearest and dearest, and feast. And then make me a plate.” Pap also belittles his son’s education choices, studying human resources at the University of Phoenix. “Scam. Who goes to college online to learn how to manage human beings. Them things don’t go,” he scolds.

The potential relationship between Juicy and Opal has a bit of a problem that only the two of them are aware of: They are both gay. Meanwhile, Larry has a dark secret of his own. But the party goes on, as Rev sings Teena Marie and Juicy warbles Radiohead’s “Creep,” a kind of replacement for the “To be or not to be” soliloquy: “I don’t care if it hurts / I wanna have control / I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul / I want you to notice / When I’m not around / So fuckin’ special / I wish I was special / But I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doin’ here? / I don’t belong here.” The lyrics represent what so many young queer Black men experience, not wanting to be made to feel invisible and less than.

Juicy uses charades to tell his uncle he knows what he did: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of . . . the . . . King. Cook. He is a cook in this play,” he tells the audience. The game is on as Rev and Juicy battle it out.

Juicy (Marcel Spears) and Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) are not destined to fall in love in reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (photo by Joan Marcus)

Fat Ham is outrageously funny, featuring superb over-the-top performances by the ensemble. Spears (Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) has a tender gentleness, a softness, to his every move; dressed in all black (the contemporary costumes are by Dominique Fawn Hill), he would fit right in as Usher in Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, another “big Black queer” character with a complicated relationship with his family and other people who’s trying to figure out just who he is and what he wants out of life. Human resources is probably not Juicy’s best career path. Perhaps Ijames named him after the Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy,” in which Biggie Smalls declares, “You know very well / Who you are / Don’t let ’em hold you down / Reach for the stars / You had a goal / But not that many / ’Cause you’re the only one / I’ll give you good and plenty.”

Ijames (White, Kill Move Paradise) interjects Shakespeare at just the right moments, as when, after Larry and Juicy share an intimate moment, the latter turns to the audience and delivers one of the Bard’s masterpieces, the poetic speech that begins “What a piece of work is a man!” But Ijames keenly changes one pronoun, and the meaning of the prose is altered following the scene we just watched,

Stacey Derosier’s lighting keeps things bright and cheery, as does Darrell Grand Moultrie’s choreography on Maruti Evans’s backyard set. Director Saheem Ali (Nollywood Dreams, Merry Wives) ably balances the wackiness with the serious nature of so much of Ijames’s dialogue alongside whimsical references to Ms. Cleo, OnlyFans, and sexy muppets. But it’s not all lighthearted fun.

At one point, Tio, talking about what he is learning from his therapist, explains to Juicy, “He said . . . These cycles of violence are like deep. Engrained. Hell, engineered. Hard to come out of. Like, your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, and what’s before that? Huh? Slavery. It’s inherited trauma. You carrying around your whole family’s trauma, man. And that’s okay. You okay. But you don’t got to let it define you.”

Juicy is determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, trying to overcome the systemic institutional racism that dooms so many Black men and tears apart families. That’s not exactly the same thing as the handing down of the crown from generation to generation of white men and boys —but it has the potential to become the half-million-dollar crown Biggie was famous for wearing.