this week in theater

INTO THE WOODS

Into the Woods features a dazzling all-star cast with superstar understudies (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

INTO THE WOODS
St. James Theatre
246 West Forty-Fourth St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 8, $69-$159
intothewoodsbway.com

At intermission of the spectacular revival of Into the Woods, I was heading outside for a breath of fresh air when I saw a notice posted on the doors that the show was not yet over, that there was a second act. At first I wondered who would leave the theater at this point, but then I thought about how nearly perfect the first act was, how everything seemed to be wrapped up in a neat little package, with everybody onstage and in the audience elated and satisfied.

But in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s devilishly clever show, “happily ever after” is a misnomer, more of a warning than a coda. As the Narrator (David Patrick Kelly) had ominously just informed us, “To. Be. Continued.” Everyone’s jubilation is about to come tumbling down, like a giant falling from the sky — although one can find plenty of exhilaration in the dark side as well.

Inspired by Bruno Bettelheim’s 1976 Freudian book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Lapine and Sondheim’s musical debuted at San Diego’s Old Globe in 1986 and moved to Broadway the following year, earning ten Tony nominations and winning three, losing the Best Musical award to The Phantom of the Opera. This new version, which premiered at New York City Center’s “Encores!” series in May, has made a super-smooth transition to the St. James, maintaining its brilliant streamlined adaptation.

The nearly-three-hour show, which has been extended through October 16, is a mashup of fairytale favorites with some added central characters. The stage is dominated by a fifteen-piece orchestra conducted by Rob Berman, who leads the musicians through Sondheim’s complicated, unpredictable score. The actors spend most of the show on a narrow, horizontal section at the front of the stage, with minimal props, highlighted by miniature versions of their forest homes dangling from the ceiling, teasingly just out of reach. In addition, they occasionally wander through the orchestra, running around and hiding behind white birch trees that have come down from above.

The story is built around three wishes. Cinderella (Phillipa Soo) is suffering through a miserable existence, terrorized by her stepmother (Nancy Opel) and stepsisters, Florinda (Brooke Ishibashi) and Lucinda (Ta’Nika Gibson), while her father (Albert Guerzon) offers her no support. “I wish to go to the festival — and the ball . . . more than anything,” Cinderella sings, referring to a grand party being thrown by the handsome prince (Gavin Creel).

Jack (Cole Thompson, although I saw Alex Joseph Grayson) and his mother (Aymee Garcia) are worried that they might lose their farm, so the mother sends Jack off to sell his beloved old and ragged cow, Milky White (Kennedy Kanagawa). “I wish my cow would give us some milk, more than anything,” Jack croons.

And the Baker (Brian D’Arcy James; I saw Jason Forbach) and his wife (Sara Bareilles) are desperate to have a baby. “I wish . . . more than the moon . . . more than life . . . I wish we might have a child,” the couple, invented for the show, opine.

Milky White (Kennedy Kanagawa) sits in the back as the Baker (Brian D’Arcy James) and his wife (Sara Bareilles) come up with a plan (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Other familiar and new characters also show up in the threatening forest. Little Red Ridinghood (Julia Lester; I saw Delphi Borich) stops at the bakery to bring some treats to her granny (Annie Golden) but better be aware of the hungry Wolf (Creel). “Into the woods / to bring some bread / to Granny who / is sick in bed. / Never can tell / what lies ahead. / For all I know, she’s already dead,” Red declares. Rapunzel (Alysia Velez) has been locked up in a tower, where another handsome prince (Joshua Henry) seeks to rescue her. A Mysterious Man (Kelly) pops up from time to time, telling riddles and positing, “When first I appear, I seem delirious. But when explained, I am nothing serious.”

Everything is set in motion by the Witch (Patina Miller), who lives next door to the Baker and his wife. She had cursed the Baker’s family — which includes the sister he never knew he had, named Rapunzel — deeming it impossible for them to have children, but she now offers to reverse it in exchange for “the cow as white as milk,” “the cape as red as blood,” “the hair as yellow as corn,” and “the slipper as pure as gold.” She promises, “Bring me these / before the chime / of midnight / in three days’ time, / and you shall have, / I guarantee, / a child as perfect / as child can be. / Go to the wood!”

And off they go, into the woods, where they have to determine how far to compromise their morals in order to acquire the four elements that will allow them to finally have a baby. These decisions ring true with audience members, who, in our own lives, regularly face ethical decisions. “Into the woods / without regret, / the choice is made, / the task is set,” the Baker, his wife, Cinderella, Jack, and Jack’s mother sing in unison. “Into the woods / to get my (our) wish, / I don’t care how, / the time is now.”

But when a widowed Giant (voiced by Golden) comes down from her haven in the sky to avenge her husband’s death, everyone’s future is destined to not be so happy after all.

In the last ten years, I’ve seen two previous adaptations of Into the Woods, from the Public Theater at the Delacorte in 2012 and Fiasco Theater for Roundabout at the Laura Pels in 2015. Both were lovely, memorable productions that were very different from each other but thoroughly satisfying in their unique approaches to a beloved musical.

First-time Broadway director Lear deBessonet (Pump Boys and Dinettes, transFigures), the head of Encores! and the founder of Public Works, and choreographer Lorin Latarro (Fiasco’s Merrily We Roll Along, Assassins for Encores!), expertly guide the actors across the stage, up and down the handful of steps, and through the trees, making the most of the tight quarters; the charming scenic design is by David Rockwell, with lighting by Tyler Micoleau, sound by Scott Lehrer and Alex Neumann, and lovely music direction by Rob Berman. The tasty costumes are by Andrea Hood, with hair, wig, and makeup design by the extraordinary Cookie Jordan.

The Wolf (Gavin Creel) has an evil plan in store for Little Red Ridinghood (Julia Lester) (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

The cast is a true ensemble; several friends and colleagues saw different actors in key roles than I did, and everyone raved about them all, whether the understudy or the award-winning star. But two performers do stand out.

Miller brings down the house when she belts out “Last Midnight,” driving the crowd into a frenzy as she cries out, “It’s the last midnight, / it’s the last verse. / Now, before it’s past midnight, / I’m leaving you my last curse: / I’m leaving you alone.” Miller won a Tony as Leading Player in Diane Paulus’s 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin, but I missed her when I went; I instead saw the wonderful Stephanie Pope, who has had quite a career of her own.

But Kanagawa nearly steals the show as Milky White. Puppet designer James Ortiz (2022 Drama Desk Award winner for Best Puppet Design for The Skin of Our Teeth) has created a tender and fragile cow out of cardboard — part Slinky, part accordion — operated by Kanagawa, who had never worked with puppets before. He masterfully moves Milky White as the cow’s destiny is threatened, making sure we feel every emotion in her static foam eyes, from joy to sadness, as if it were a living creature in front of us. It’s a bravura performance that is receiving Tony buzz.

“If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives,” Bettelheim writes in the introduction of The Uses of Enchantment. “Our positive feelings give us the strength to develop our rationality; only hope for the future can sustain us in the adversities we unavoidably encounter.”

This latest adaptation of Into the Woods zeroes in on how Lapine’s book and Sondheim’s music and lyrics form a fairy tale for both kids and adults, about human beings’ instinctual desires, alongside their darkest fears. And don’t worry about the second act; it turns out that happily ever after is always within reach.

HYPROV: IMPROV UNDER HYPNOSIS

Volunteers fall under the spell of master hypnotist Asad Mecci in HYPROV (photo by Carol Rosegg)

HYPROV
Daryl Roth Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 30, $55-$195
www.hyprov.com

There’s a curious aspect to ticket prices for HYPROV: Improv Under Hypnosis, which opened tonight at the Daryl Roth Theatre. The highest-priced tickets are in the first row and on the aisle in the lower rows, nearly double the price in the second row center. After seeing the hilarious show, I understand why.

HYPROV, a combination of hypnosis and improvisational comedy, has been traveling across the US and Canada, along with stops in England and Scotland, since 2016. Canadian master hypnotist and motivational life and performance coach Asad Mecci contacted Scottish-Canadian improv legend Colin Mochrie via an email he sent through the comedian’s website. Mochrie’s manager, Jeff Andrews, discussed the idea with Mochrie and HYPROV was born.

The evening begins with Mecci describing to the audience what they’re in for. Twenty volunteers will come onstage and be hypnotized, locking out their brain’s penchant for self-reflection and embarrassment so the participants will be much less inhibited and able to invest themselves fully in improv comedy sketches. No one will be made to do anything they don’t want to do; instead, they’re so relaxed that they can release their inner performer. Mecci whittles down the twenty volunteers to about five who will then be part of the main show.

So, back to the ticket prices. When Mecci announces that anyone interested in being hypnotized should come to the stage, there’s a mad dash from all over the theater. Thus, if you are sitting in the front row or the lower aisle seats, you have a much better chance of making the twenty-person cutoff than someone sitting, say, in the middle of the twentieth row. My guess is that those paying the premium price are determined to make it to the stage; a woman in the center of my row hesitated just enough to miss the cut by a few people. But no worries; like the rest of us, she was about to have a rousing good time nevertheless.

Asad Mecci and Colin Mochrie set up the next scene in hypnotic improv show at the Daryl Roth (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Part of the fun is watching the muscle-bound Mecci, who studied under hypnotist Mike Mandel and life and business strategist Tony Robbins, do his thing as you try to predict who he will ultimately select. He tests how relaxed and hypnotized the volunteers are by putting them in a few unusual situations; he doesn’t make anyone bark like a dog or act like a chicken, but he does have them search for one of their missing body parts. The night I went, he asked one of the volunteers why he needed it. “Because my mother gave it to me,” he responded, as if it were a family heirloom. He made the cut.

After Mecci chooses that evening’s cast, Mochrie, who has been a regular on several iterations of Whose Line Is It Anyway? for more than twenty-five years, working with Ryan Stiles, Wayne Brady, Greg Hoops, and Brad Sherwood (as well as hosts Drew Carey and Aisha Tyler), takes over. For the next hour or so, Mochrie selects a series of scenes — there are about ten standard setups in the repertoire, with more to be added — and asks the audience to call out prompts, from locations and professions to animals and props. Mecci throws in an extra twist by deciding which of the hypnotized cast will play what role.

Then the sketches unfurl, with Mochrie ready to pick up any pauses and Mecci holding the mic for the volunteers while making sure they don’t snap out of their trancelike state and, even more important, don’t cross any barriers, either psychological or physical. For example, when one young man began a surprisingly entertaining dance, mixing contemporary with ballet, Mecci watched closely to make sure he wasn’t going to whack anyone in the head or take an unintentional dive off the stage. In another scene, two characters were in the midst of a romantic moment when Mecci jumped between them right before they were about to kiss. “That was a close one,” Mochrie acknowledged. Mecci, who has to be careful not to become too much of an audience member himself — he tries his best to contain his own outbursts of laughter — heartily agreed.

Mochrie, who was one of the first popular social media gifs, appears to be having a ball through it all, though he admits that it is scary for him too; he’s used to working with trained professionals, so his instincts have to be even quicker here with the amateur comedians. He also had to sing, quickly noting that music is not his forte, but the hypnotized woman he duetted with knocked it out of the park.

Speaking of music, Rufus Wainwright, who was born in New York but raised in Montreal, has composed an original score for the induction scene, a steady, breathy drone that is heard as the volunteers are being hypnotized. (Mecci had helped Wainwright’s husband quit smoking through hypnosis.) Meanwhile, music director John Hilsen sits off to stage left, improvising at the keyboards as the scenes play out.

Just about anything can happen in HYPROV, with a few important exceptions (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The line of the night didn’t come from Mecci or Mochrie but instead from one of the volunteers who, while portraying a sound effects engineer for an old-time radio show who gets each noise wrong, called out in a high-pitched voice when he was cued for an owl: “owwwwwwwwlllllllll noooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiise!”

Jo Winiarski’s set features a giant circle on the back wall, right behind a curved bench where the volunteers sit when not part of the show. The colors on the circle change ever so slowly, with a calming effect; the lighting designer is Jeff Croiter, with sound by Walter Trarbach. Longtime television writer and producer Stan Zimmerman (The Gilmore Girls, A Very Brady Sequel) is left with the near-impossible task of directing a production that thrives when it veers toward a certain amount of chaos.

While there are sure to be skeptics who think that at least some of the volunteers have to be plants, Mecci and Mochrie declare that they have never before met any of the people who have made it onstage, and I spoke with two of the participants after the show who both assured me that it was all legit, that they were aware all the time exactly what they were doing but free of any lack of self-esteem or worry that they would embarrass themselves in public.

HYPROV can be a little ragged at times, and there are occasional hiccups and lapses as the improv sketches get under way, but the show is a tribute to what we are all capable of, persuading each of us that maybe we should get on the stage next time and give it a go. Maybe you’ll come home having delivered the line of the night — but you’ll probably need to splurge for those more expensive seats.

LIMITLESS AI / FLIGHT / SÉANCE

Limitless AI immerses audiences in a barrage of digital imagery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LIMITLESS AI
ArtsDistrict Brooklyn (AD/BK)
25 Franklin St., Brooklyn
Thursday – Sunday through November 20, $44.50 – $49.50
artsdistrict.live
online slideshow

There’s a big-time new artist in town, but it’s not a human being.

Apps such as DALL-E 2, Craiyon, Artbreeder, and Deep Dream offer anyone the opportunity to create a virtual masterpiece by feeding descriptive text into an artificial intelligence generator that then uses an algorithm to output a digital image. The app Midjourney recently found itself in the news when a user named #postpoopzoomies made a series of works in which Emmy-winning Last Week Tonight host John Oliver married a cabbage.

Meanwhile, immersive art experiences have taken off around the world, large-scale, Instagram-friendly installations in which canvases come to life, filling massive rooms with pieces by van Gogh, Magritte, Klimt, and other international favorites.

Turkish artists Ferdi Alici and Eylul Alici of Istanbul’s Ouchhh Studio take both to the next level with Limitless AI, the centerpiece of the new ArtsDistrict Brooklyn (AD/BK) in Greenpoint. The twenty-five-thousand-square-foot space on Franklin St. features three immersive experiences along with a café and an outdoor bar; the cofounders and executive producers of the NYC destination are the Toronto-based David Galpern and Charles Roy.

Limitless AI is a sixty-minute experience divided into five sections; visitors can sit on benches or movable chairs or wander around the ten-thousand-square-foot room, where an ever-changing panoply of spectacular images are splashed onto walls, pillars, and the floor by more than sixty 4K laser projectors. There’s also a mezzanine with a nifty view. Be sure to walk to the various corners to enjoy different perspectives, but be warned that if you look down at the floor as you proceed, you might get a little dizzy, but in a good way.

The show begins with “Poetic AI,” consisting of a barrage of words, letters, and phrases from Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and others, in black-and-white. “Data is the paint. Algorithm is the brush. Architecture is the canvas,” a robotic voice announces. “Twenty million lines of visionary text, unspooled into data, processed by a mechanical mind.”

“Leonardo da Vinci: Wisdom of AI Light,” set to an original score by beloved Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi and multidisciplinary Turkish-Canadian musician, composer, and DJ Mercan Dede, celebrates the genius of Leonardo and such other Renaissance artists as Michelangelo and Caravaggio with digital re-creations, using billions of pieces of data from the paintings, of some of their most famous works, from the Mona Lisa to the Pietà to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; here, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, in which the fingers of God and the first man nearly touch, evoke the future of artificial intelligence, as if the Supreme Being is passing the torch.

Classic Renaissance paintings are re-created through AI algorithms for immersive Brooklyn installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Data Gate” repurposes millions of images taken by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, while “Dark Machine” uses data compiled by the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The voice asks, “What goes through the mind of an atom when it explodes? Maybe this.”

Limitless AI concludes with “Superstrings,” which adds a human component. A wide column opens up to reveal a three-piece band performing live; one of the instrumentalists is wearing a headset that monitors her real-time EEG brainwaves, while the algorithm is also picking up information from the people in the crowd, resulting in what the voice describes as “the flickering waves of human consciousness, transformed into light.” The finale is unique for every show.

As with the dueling immersive van Gogh presentations, I find it a strange way to experience classic art; even in the age of Instagram and TikTok, there’s still nothing quite like seeing the originals up close and personal in museums and churches. But the non-art sections of Limitless AI don’t have the same restrictions, letting loose with the unexpected.

It’s sort of like the old days of Laser Floyd and Laser Zeppelin, psychedelically grooving out at planetariums, but replacing rock and roll with visual and mathematical data as the baseline for the imagery. It can be ultracool and beautiful as well as repetitive and head-scratchingly bizarre; it’s best not to get too caught up in taking photos and videos and let the sound and images waft over you, literally.

There are two other immersive installations at AD/BK, set in a pair of side-by-side forty-foot-long white shipping containers in the outdoor back patio. Created by London’s Darkfield, Flight and Séance each takes place in complete darkness, with the audience wearing binaural headphones that make it seem like characters and events are actually present in the real space around you. The twenty-five-minute Flight is reminiscent of Martín Bondone’s Odd Man Out, in which the seated, blindfolded audience goes on a mock plane trip narrated by an Argentine guitarist returning home from America, as well as Simon Stephens’s Blindness, a postapocalyptic tale about strangers trying to survive after an epidemic robs most people of their sight.

Digital images flash on walls and floors in Limitless AI (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Flight involves a meticulously constructed replica of a plane interior. The setup is definitely economy class, right down to the uncomfortably small distance between seats, but the production values are first class, with a series of sounds and videos that all-too-convincingly simulate a sketchy airline and life-changing outcome. Musings about Schrödinger’s cat and the nature of reality make for an enjoyable if puzzling ride.

For the twenty-minute Séance, the audience is arranged on two sides of a long, narrow table, with chandeliers hanging from above and lots of red velvet. Everyone has gathered to attempt to contact spirits; a medium guides the Victorian story as creepy things start to occur, and not just through your headphones. Be sure to sit near the end of the room if you think you might need to suddenly run out.

So, what’s the future of AI art? In 2019, the US Copyright Office ruled that AI art cannot be copyrighted because it “lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim.” Attorney Ryan Abbott, representing AI pioneer and Imagination Engines president and CEO Stephen L. Thaler in his request for a new hearing, recently told Artnet News, “We disagree with the Copyright Office’s decision and plan to appeal. . . . AI is able to make functionally creative output in the absence of a traditional human author, and protecting AI-generated works with copyright is vital to promoting the production of socially valuable content.”

If the flurry of immersive art presentations have proved anything, it’s that these experiences are all about socially valuable content, particularly when it comes to marrying a Brassica oleracea or other species of wild vegetable.

STRANGER THINGS: THE EXPERIENCE

Interactive experience immerses fans into the creepy world of Stranger Things (photo courtesy Netflix)

STRANGER THINGS: THE EXPERIENCE
Duggal Greenhouse
63 Flushing Ave., Building 268, Brooklyn
Wednesday – Sunday through September 4, children $64 – $96.80, adults $84.90 – $129
strangerthings-experience.com

If you’ve been watching or are up to date with Stranger Things on Netflix, you might have found yourself occasionally having trouble sleeping, especially after certain particularly frightening episodes of the sci-fi horror hit, set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, the citizens of Hawkins are having their own slumber issues, which is the premise behind Stranger Things: The Experience, an immersive adventure that continues at the Duggal Greenhouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard through September 4.

The Hawkins National Laboratory (HNL), part of the US Department of Energy, is conducting a sleep study to find out just what is going on in “the Best Small Town in America” — as if they didn’t already know that it has to do with killer creatures and the Upside Down, an alternate dimension where evil, unexplainable events are happening, brought about by the lab itself.

Subjects — er, ticket holders — are led through a series of rooms that begins as a scientific research study into paranormal powers, testing various skills, but quickly turns dangerous. Suddenly the soothing, instructive words of Dept. of Energy executive Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) and HNL head Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), affectionately known to his patients as Papa, seem disingenuous as new perils await around each corner.

Beware the demogorgon at Stranger Things experience (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Meanwhile, a group of kids are trying to help, consisting of the goofy but determined Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo); the always serious Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin); the fiercely independent Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink); the deeply sensitive Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), who went missing in season one; Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), who undergoes the biggest coming-of-age changes over the course of the show; and, at the center of it all, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), a mysterious young girl with special powers who appears virtually out of nowhere in the first episode. Just as an fyi, you won’t encounter Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour), Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton), Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson), or Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) during the journey, but to say any more would venture into spoiler territory.

Stranger Things: The Experience is like a series of escape rooms, except there is always a way out. The show, created by the Duffer Brothers, has presented thirty-four episodes over four seasons since its premiere on July 15, 2016; each of the uniquely detailed spaces in Duggal Greenhouse is like a new episode, with its own storyline as well as prompts to make sure participants make it through safely.

Although children as young as five are allowed to enter, there are four-letter words, and several of the cool special effects can be legitimately scary for some people of any age, so be prepared. Netflix clearly went all-in on this sixty-minute production, which includes a 3D room that, like the show, makes you question reality. Everything is original to the experience; it does not repurpose existing material. It also knows exactly what fans want, so arrive with an investigative spirit that can lead to a few little bonuses that others might miss. But you won’t be lost if you haven’t finished season four yet. (The fifth and final season is not scheduled to air until 2024 or 2025.)

The experience concludes with a re-creation of the Starcourt Mall, complete with the Scoops Ahoy Ice Cream Parlor, Surfer Boy Pizza, the Time-Out Arcade, a video store, a 1980s-style telephone booth (alas, there’s a dial tone but you can’t make a call), the Hellfire Club merch shop, Rink-O-Mania, the Byers living room (with fab details that need to be seen up close), and the Upside bar, where you can order such drinks as the Demogorgon, the Upside Down, Friends Don’t Lie, the Hopper, and Yuri Gonna Love This and check out a few original costumes and props. There’s also a bonus photo opp room.

Tickets are expensive — $64-$84.90 for standard admission, $96.80-$129 for VIP skip-the-line access, which includes a free drink, a tote bag, and a discount on merchandise — so it’s really meant for the true Stranger Things fan. But for those loyal devotees, some of whom come dressed as characters — everyone is encouraged to dress like it’s the ’80s — it’s wicked fun, a bitchin’, righteously gnarly good time.

To keep up the strangeness, Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical returns to New York City in an updated, immersive, in-the-round production starting September 12 at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s. Directed by Nick Flatto and with book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Hogue, the hundred-minute show features such songs as “Welcome to Hawkins,” “The Dad I Never Had,” “Getting Closer,” “In These Woods,” and “Where There’s a Will.”

HARLEM WEEK: A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM AND MORE

Who: Uptown Dance Academy, Unveiled Unlocked, IMPACT Repertory Theatre, Mama Foundation’s Sing Harlem! Choir, the Isn’t Her Grace Amazing! Choir, Lord Nelson, Shemar Levy, Lorenzo Laroc, the Bengsons, Kenny Lattimore, Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band
What: Annual Harlem Week celebration
Where: U.S. Grant National Memorial Park, West 122nd St. at Riverside Dr.
When: Sunday, August 14, free, noon – 7:00 pm
Why: One of the centerpieces of Harlem Week is “A Great Day in Harlem,” which takes place Sunday, August 14, as part of the opening weekend of this ten-day summer festival. There will be an international village with booths selling food, clothing, jewelry, and more, as well as live music and dance divided into “Artz, Rootz & Rhythm,” “The Gospel Caravan,” and “the Concert Under the Stars.” Among the performers are the Uptown Dance Academy, Kenny Lattimore, Unveiled Unlocked, IMPACT Repertory Theatre, the Sing Harlem! Choir, the Isn’t Her Grace Amazing! Choir, and electric violinist and composer Lorenzo Laroc. In addition, the Bengsons will play songs from their show Where the Mountains Meet the Sea; there will be a tribute to Tobago-born calypsonian Lord Nelson, with Shemar Levy and Nelson himself; and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On album will be honored by Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band.

Harlem Week runs August 12-21 with such other events as the Percy Sutton 5K and 1.5-mile Harlem Health Walk (August 13, 8:00 am), Great Jazz on the Great Hill in Central Park with the Jimmy Heath Legacy Band, the Antonio Hart Quartet, and Tammy McCann (August 13, 4:00), the livestreamed Charles B Rangel Systemic Racism Summit (August 16, noon), the ImageNation Outdoor Film Festival (Marcus Garvey Park, August 17, 6:00; St. Nicholas Park, August 20, 6:00), the livestreamed talk “Ta-Nehisi Coates and Dr. Julius Garvey: A Harlem on My Mind Conversation” (August 17, 7:30), the livestreamed Arts & Culture/Broadway Summit (August 18, 3:00), Harlem SummerStage (August 18, 5:30), Summer in the City with the Jeff Foxx Band, Donnell Jones, EPMD, Freddie Jackson, and others (August 20, 1:00), and the grand Harlem Day with Dru Hill, Slick Rick, Doug E Fresh, Levell, Grandmaster Caz & Melle Mel, MJ the Musical, and more. All events are free.

HAMLET / ORESTEIA

Alex Lawther is impressive as Hamlet in Robert Icke’s dazzling production at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

HAMLET/ORESTEIA
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
In repertory through August 13, $45-$199
www.armoryonpark.org/hamlet
www.armoryonpark.org/oresteia

An overwhelming sense of grief and severe family dysfunction link Robert Icke’s ingenious pairing of Hamlet and Oresteia, running in repertory at Park Ave. Armory through August 13. You might not immediately think of the two tragedies, one written in English by William Shakespeare around 1600 about an introspective Danish prince, the other a Greek trilogy penned by Aeschylus in the fifth century BCE focusing on the conflicted son of a powerful king, as theatrical brethren, but Icke masterfully weaves them together over the course of seven thrilling hours.

Following up his superb one-person reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People starring Ann Dowd in a pandemic-reconfigured Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the armory, Icke returns with this extremely satisfying duo, which tackle similar themes in these contemporary versions. Whereas Icke makes subtle tweaks to Hamlet, he institutes much heavier changes to Oresteia.

They both take place on Hildegard Bechtler’s expansive, relatively shallow horizontal set, with entrances at either side and a glassed-in back room with sliding doors that are alternately transparent, translucent, or opaque. For Hamlet, business chairs and a comfy L-shaped couch are brought on- and offstage in between rectangular marble stanchions, while for Oresteia, the furniture includes a long dinner table with benches, marble Greek pillars with exposed stone walls, and a large bathtub in the rear. Bechtler also designed the modern-day costumes, with intricate lighting by Natasha Chivers and sound by Tom Gibbons.

Hamlet, superbly played with a tender vulnerability by twenty-seven-year-old British actor Alex Lawther, is dismayed to find that his recently widowed mother, Gertrude (Jennifer Ehle), has married her late husband’s brother, Hamlet’s father, Claudius (Angus Wright), who is now the king of Denmark. The two seem very much in love, making out on the couch. But when Hamlet’s father’s ghost (David Rintoul), who appears on closed circuit security cameras wandering the empty, dungeonlike halls of Elsinore castle, tells his son that Claudius murdered him, Hamlet, who has been considering going back to school in Wittenberg, becomes obsessed with revenge, yet he lacks the resolve to take any kind of significant action in his life.

Klytemnestra (Anastasia Hille) and Agamemnon (Angus Wright) face each other across the family dinner table in Oresteia (photo by Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, he seems destined to marry Ophelia (Kirsty Ryder), the daughter of Claudius’s chief adviser, Polonius (Peter Wight), and sister of the strong-willed Laertes (Luke Treadaway). Soon bodies are piling up, as Hamlet says, “with blood of fathers mothers daughters sons.”

In Oresteia, Agamemnon (Angus Wright), the king of Mycenae, is told by a seer, “By his hands alone. The child is the price. Fair winds.” Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus (Peter Wight), need to sail their ships to Troy but are becalmed in Aulis, and Agamemnon interprets the prophecy to mean that he must kill his six-year-old daughter, Iphigenia (Elyana Faith Randolph or Alexis Rae Forlenza), in order to appease the gods and get the winds moving. The king is desperate to find another way, but both his brother and his herald, Talthybius (Josh Higgott), insist the deed must be done. When the queen, Klytemnestra (Anastasia Hille), deciphers the prophecy, she is of course furious, declaring, “You’re ill. You’re mad. To kill our child?” But she might not be able to stop him.

Ten years later, when Agamemnon returns from the war, bringing with him teenage captive Cassandra (Hara Yannas), he finds his family vastly changed. Bright young Orestes (Hudson Paul or Wesley Holloway) has grown into a conflicted teenager (Treadaway), daughter Electra (Tia Bannon) is jealous of Cassandra, and cousin Aegisthus (Angus Wright) has usurped Agamemnon’s place in the family. Soon bodies are piling up, and Klytemnestra warns Orestes, with more than a touch of wishful thinking, “You do not want blood on your hands.” Fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons are all in jeopardy.

Fear is central to both narratives. While Hamlet delivers his despair and anxiety directly to the audience in famous soliloquys, Oresteia unfolds in flashbacks as Orestes shares his memories with an unidentified woman (Ryder) who appears to be his therapist. Orestes tells her, “I watch it again, happening for the first time but — too late, too late to stop it. It pours out of me. But what if what’s next is — ? What if it’s better left sealed up, undisturbed?” The doctor responds, “We have to understand the truth.” Orestes: “What if it’s a dream? What if it’s a lie?” Doctor: “Then those lies reveal something about you. ‘Our self’ isn’t an absolute thing. It’s handfuls of memories and moments and people — and we form them into who we think we are. For most of us, it’s only partly true: one version of truth. A story.” Orestes: “A story. A story I’ve been through before. As a child. But I don’t know where it ends —”

Claudius (Angus Wright) and Gertrude (Jennifer Ehle) hold hands, much to Hamlet’s (Alex Lawther) consternation (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Looking backward and forward while fearing the end is also a leitmotif for each play. “I try and look forward rather than backward,” Agamemnon says. Hamlet explains, “I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down / for yourself sir should be old as I am / if like a crab you could go backward.” At dinner, Electra confesses, “I know. I was late. I have apologized. Let’s all just move forward.” When Orestes insists to the doctor that he can’t remember the past, she implores, “You will remember something. We just have to begin. Travel back along the road, all the way back to where it began.” Hamlet says to his mother, “Repent what’s past / Avoid what is to come.”

The words “end” or “ending” are repeated throughout all seven hours. “It’s ending. It is ending,” Agamemnon says. Hamlet explains to Claudius, “We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots / that’s the end.” Talthybius tells Agamemnon and Menelaus, “No one thinks this thing is close to the end. It’s cut in deep, it’s gone too far for that. And our enemy is prepared, planning years beyond — so there’s no road to the end of this that’s swift.” Ophelia, losing control of her wits, babbles to Laertes, “I would give you some violets but they withered all when my father died / they say he made a good end / and will he not come again? / and will he not come again? / no no he is dead.”

Both works also explore the power of dreams. Hamlet famously says, “To die to sleep / to sleep perchance to dream / ay, there’s the rub / for in that sleep of death what dreams may come / when we have shuffled off this mortal coil / must give us pause.” Orestes asks the doctor, “What happens when I dream? What is knotting together with what — what is being made? Fear and wishes and — and if it’s me, if it’s just inside me with no meaning elsewhere, can’t I create something better than this, can’t I choose imagined hope rather than imagined fear?” Shortly after Klytemnestra awakes from a bad dream, Cilissa (Marty Cruikshank), Orestes’s nurse, recalls of him as a baby, “He screamed and screamed at night. Never a good sleeper.”

Icke, who is only thirty-five and was an associate director with the Almeida in London from 2013 to 2019, is now the Ibsen artist in residence at Ivo van Hove’s Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, and he has picked up van Hove’s obsession with using cameras to present live feeds on screens. (The projections are by Tal Yarden for Hamlet and Tim Reid for Oresteia.) In addition to the video surveillance that reveals Hamlet’s father’s ghost, there are news reports about young Fortinbras leading Norway’s military marching toward Denmark; press interviews with Agamemnon; and Claudius closely watching The Mousetrap, the play-within-a-play in which Hamlet discloses to Claudius that he knows he murdered his father. In addition, the screens are used for countdowns, ticking away the seconds during fifteen-, ten-, and five-minute intermissions in Oresteia like a doomsday clock. Meanwhile, articles of evidence and the exact times of characters’ deaths are detailed above the set like breaking news.

Klytemnestra (Anastasia Hille) can’t hold the pain inside any longer in Oresteia (photo by Joan Marcus)

Icke digs into 1960s music icons by featuring several Bob Dylan songs in Hamlet — one does not generally associate Dylan, and such tunes as Things Have Changed (“Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose / Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose / People are crazy and times are strange / I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range”) and All Along the Watchtower (“There must be some kind of way outta here / Said the joker to the thief / There’s too much confusion / I can’t get no relief), as the soundtrack for a party with lots of dancing and balloons (of course, “Masters of War” would not exactly be the best choice either) — while Iphigenia sings verses from the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” in Oresteia (“God only knows what I’d be without you”).

The casting between the two plays is shrewdly resourceful. Wright is terrific as Claudius, Agamemnon, and Aegisthus, standing tall, speaking firmly, but not afraid to show the cracks in their armor. Peter Wright is stalwart as the loyal but ill-fated Polonius and Menelaus. Rintoul portrays the Player King and the ghost, haunting Claudius and Hamlet, respectively. Other key dualities that bring the works together include Bannon as Guildenstern and Electra, Treadaway as Laertes and Orestes, Abubakar as Marcellus and Calchas, Higgott as Horatio and Talthybius, Ryder as Ophelia and the doctor, Hara Yannas as Bernardo and Cassandra, and Athene Ross Waiton (in Hamlet only) as Francisco and the gravedigger, who makes a memorable appearance from under the stage, warbling Dylan’s “Sugar Baby.” Lia Williams was scheduled to play Gertrude and Klytemnestra but had to pull out after injuring her Achilles heel; Ehle and Hille are excellent as her respective replacements.

Both Hamlet and Orestes are onstage virtually the entire show, watching the proceedings when they’re not directly involved. They experience devastating loss that rips at their souls, and each has the opportunity to commit murder to avenge wrongdoing. Instead of wielding “a bare bodkin,” Hamlet puts a gun to Claudius’s head, while Orestes pulls a knife on one of his parents. But revenge will not necessarily relieve them of their deep trauma. “You must know your father lost a father / that father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound / in filial obligation for some term / to do obsequious sorrow / but to persever / in obstinate condolement is a course / of impious stubbornness / ’tis unmanly grief,” Claudius tells Hamlet. Referring to a murder in his family, the doctor tells Orestes, “You survived that trauma. We’re barely there in the moment it happens — we hardly feel it as it hollows us out — what hurts is the next second; awakening into what’s left — And I don’t think you’ve woken up. I’m not sure you want to wake up.” Orestes asks, “Why would I?” The doctor responds, “Fear. Of where you might be. Where you might really be.”

In a world turned upside down by a global pandemic that has killed nearly six and a half million people, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, climate change that is threatening the future of the planet, mass shootings in the United States committed with automatic assault weapons, and an insurrection that continues to jeopardize American democracy, many of us are afraid of where we might really be.

As Electra asks, “How do you mourn?” It’s a question we are all facing these days, in one way or another, a question brilliantly explored in Icke’s dueling plays.

HEART: A POETIC PLAY

Jade Anouka shares her personal story in Heart (photo by Trévon James 2022)

HEART
Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 14, $30-$67
www.audible.com/ep/minettalane
hearttheplay.com

British poet and performer Jade Anouka establishes the parameters of her world premiere one-person show, Heart, from the very beginning, in an explanatory prologue. Standing front and center onstage, she tells the audience at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, “This story was written by a black woman. / But this story has no mention of blackness. / This story is being performed by a black woman. / The fact that she is black / And a woman / Is political enough / And she already takes up much of her life talking about it. / About being black / And how it feels to be a woman. / So this is a just a story / Told by a black woman. / This is not a black story / Or a woman story / This is perhaps a story / For all the misfits, all those who have ever felt ‘other.’”

For the next seventy minutes, through six scenes plus an interlude and an epilogue, Anouka, a self-declared hopeless romantic who was born in London in 1990, shares her deeply intimate tale of her search for who she is, seeking personal and professional success. “I invite you to feel / Feel the rhythms / Of your own heartbeat / As I tell you a story / My story,” she says.

In spoken-word verse that ranges from furious rap to Shakespearean metre, Anouka — who, at the age of only thirty-one, has already appeared in nine works by the Bard, in addition to starring in such British series as Cleaning Up and Turn Up Charlie and portraying witch Ruta Skadi in His Dark Materials — leads us through a failed marriage; being misunderstood by her Bible-thumping Trinidadian mother and Jamaican father; a booze-and-drugs-fueled sexual rampage; using running to escape her issues; and jumping into a surprising new relationship.

Along the way, she offers no apologies for the choices she makes, concentrating on small instances that help define her emotional and psychological journey, like the tender interlocking of fingers. But ever-present is what she calls “the beast,” which she first saw in her husband but now believes is inside her. “I know he’s got a dark side / But sure haven’t we all,” she notes, later admitting, worried about her own mental health, “Precious moments of stillness / Of breath, of noticing / My beast / Realising / My beast.”

Anouka is haunted by thoughts of inadequacy, as a daughter, an actor, and a partner. “Unfortunately / I’m stuck with me / Trying to be / The best version / Of me I can be / But inadequacy / Pulls me inside of me / Can’t see the strengths / Only focus on the bad of me . . . It’s my beast you see / It’s taunting me,” she confesses in a way we can all relate to.

When she falls hard for someone, she attempts to break free of the beast and find joy in a new relationship, opining, “I so wish I was bolder / So wish I was braver / I so wish you could be proud of me / So wish you could love me / So wish you could trust me / So wish you knew just what I do / That I’d shout from the rooftops / And sing from the rafters / I love you I love you I love you! / But I can’t do that / I’m scared to do that.” But this time she’s determined to make things work.

Anouka is no stranger to solo performances. She turned her 2015 poem “Winning,” from her poetry collection Eggs on Toast, into a spirited video and won a Stage Award for Acting Excellence at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Sabrina Mahfouz’s one-person show, Chef. Although the narrative sometimes lapses into the mundane, the staging picks it up, occasionally literally. Heart is gorgeously directed by Ola Ince (The Convert, Poet in da Corner), with a wonderfully transcendent set by Obie winner Arnulfo Maldonado.

Jade Anouka rises high in world premiere one-person show (photo by Trévon James 2022)

Anouka, in a colorful costume by Emily Rebholz, interacts with several rows of fabric hanging from the ceiling alongside narrow, vertical neon bulbs, their hues changing with Anouka’s emotions courtesy of Obie winner Jen Schriever’s majestic lighting. Early on, a swing drops down from above like a gift from heaven, offering Anouka a brief respite of childhood innocence. Later, she climbs atop a tall chair that nearly reaches the rafters, evoking both a lifeguard station and a high chair for infants. The engaging movement choreography is by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster. Tony winner Fitz Patton’s sound design (with original music by Renell Shaw and Patton) serves a key role from the outset, starting with a low drone that murmurs through the theater as the audience enters.

Audible specializes in presenting short runs of one-person shows (with some exceptions, as with the recent truncated, controversial adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night) that are available as audiobooks. Previous productions include Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie, Lili Taylor in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, and Billy Crudup in David Cale’s Harry Clarke.

Heart is so dependent on the compelling staging and Anouka’s connection with the theatergoers — she tries to make eye contact with every audience member, never just looking into space — that I can’t imagine simply listening to it through earphones or in the car without those visuals. So get yourselves over to the Minetta Lane to see it in person as soon as you can; your heart will thank you.

[Note: The August 10 performance will be followed by a talkback with Anouka and playwright Dave Harris (Exception to the Rule, Tambo & Bones).]