this week in theater

THEATRE FOR ONE: HERE IS FUTURE

Here Is Future takes place in a mobile container for one actor and one audience member at a time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HERE IS FUTURE
Manhattan West Plaza
395 Ninth Ave. between 31st & 33rd Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through August 22, 1:00 – 7:00; free tickets available Monday mornings at 10:00
theatreforone.com

During the pandemic lockdown, Theatre for One’s Here We Are was my lifeline to live theater. On Thursday nights in October, TFO presented eight free online microplays written, directed, and performed by BIPOC women (with one exception), short works in which the solo actor and solo audience member both have their camera and audio on, able to see and hear one another. There was even a virtual lobby where people could type in their thoughts as they waited for shows to begin.

In the “before time,” pre-Covid 19, TFO performed its intimate works in a mobile four-by-eight-foot repurposed equipment container. Now TFO artistic director Christine Jones has gone back to the setting they originally used for the project to bring us Here Is Future, six new microplays between five and ten minutes each in which one actor performs for one audience member, seated on either side of the container, separated by a plexiglass sheet. Free tickets become available Monday mornings at 10:00 for that week’s performances, so you need to book them quick.

Several Here We Are creators are back for this follow-up, which takes place in the Manhattan West plaza on Ninth Ave. past the new Penn Station and is focused on where we go from here. The program consists of Jaclyn Backhaus’s The Curse, directed by Rebecca Martinez and starring Angel Desai; Lydia R. Diamond’s Turtle Turtle and That Which We Keep Telling Ourselves Is Over Now, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene and starring Gillian Glasco; DeLanna Studi’s The Golda Project, directed by Martinez and starring Tanis Pareneau; korde arrington tuttle’s the love vibration, directed by SRĐA and starring Denise Manning; Stacey Rose’s Gravita 4 Para 0, directed by Greene and starring Joanie Anderson or Myxy Tyler; and Regina Taylor’s The Transformed Returns, directed by Taylor and starring Lizan Mitchell. The costumes are by Hahnji Jang, with lighting and sound by Josh Higgason.

I’ve seen four of the plays so far, and they were all poignant and moving. In The Transformed Returns, Mitchell portrays a grandmother dealing with the coronavirus crisis, desperate to squeeze the cheeks of her new grandchild, whom she cannot visit in person, while dealing with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated. The play begins with Mitchell sanitizing her side of the container, reminding us of what we’re still going through. (The insides of the container are thoroughly cleaned after each performance.)

Anderson is spectacular in Gravita 4 Para 0, in which the container is set up like a waiting room in a clinic, actor and audience member sitting side-by-side (separated by the glass), facing the same direction. She plays a woman from a large family who engages you in conversation, nervously talking about her history with parents, siblings, lovers, and abortions. She is so convincing that you’ll feel like you know her, and care about her, when it’s over.

In Turtle Turtle and That Which We Keep Telling Ourselves Is Over Now, you’re sitting at a table opposite a frenetic recent divorcée (superbly portrayed by an intoxicating Glasco) who is both anxious and excited to be finally going on an in-person date during the pandemic. Glasco positively glows as her character worries about allergies and Covid-19.

And in The Curse, Desai is engaging as a woman who believes terrible things have been happening to her and everyone around her because she is cursed — and she’s concerned for you too.

Produced by Octopus Theatricals and presented by Arts Brookfield, Here Is Future runs through August 22; walk-up slots are available on a first-come, first-served basis if there are no-shows. Masks are required of the audience, but the performers will be unmasked. Even in this rather small venue, it’s great to be experiencing live theater again, especially at this high quality, and for free. Sign up and see as many of the plays as you can, a terrific prelude to the upcoming fall theater season.

PUPPET WEEK NYC

THE INTERNATIONAL PUPPET FRINGE FESTIVAL
The Clemente Center, 107 Suffolk St.
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave.at 104th St.
August 11-15 live, August 16-31 online, most events free
puppetfringenyc.com
www.theclementecenter.org

“I could never be on stage on my own. But puppets can say things that humans can’t say,” British comedian, actress, and ventriloquist Nina Conti once explained. You can see a bevy of puppets this month at the International Puppet Fringe Festival, running August 11-15 in person at the Clemente on the Lower East Side, with a few special programs at the Museum of the City of New York, then moving online August 16-31. The fest, hosted by Teatro SEA and the Clemente, is part of the inaugural Puppet Week NYC and features a wide range of programming involving puppets, including live presentations, book readings, workshops, panel discussions, exhibition openings, and panel discussions, most of which are free. “The Clemente is a fitting home for the festival’s events, as puppetry found an early home here in the 1990s and we continue to foster diverse puppet performances in our theater spaces,” Clemente executive director Libertad Guerra said in a statement. “Our hope is that Puppet Week NYC draws attention to this thriving and evolving art form uniting theater with all the visual arts and attracting people of all ages, backgrounds, and cultural identities.”

International Puppet Fringe Festival founder and producer Dr. Manuel Morán added, “During the pandemic, when our curtains couldn’t go up, our roster of puppet makers and puppeteers were eagerly preparing to enthrall audiences with their creative talents, and we can’t wait to finally share their work with you.” This year’s honoree is Vincent Anthony, founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts. Below is the full schedule. Oh, and don’t forget what writer and illustrator Guy Davenport once warned: “I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.”

Wednesday, August 11
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
“Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente” exhibition opening, 5:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, 5:30
Opening Remarks and festival’s dedication to Vincent Anthony, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
The Shari Lewis Legacy Show by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 8:00

Thursday, August 12
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba, Episode 2: Dominican Republic, Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 1:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, hosted by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 6:00
“Puppets of New York” Opening Celebration, Museum of the City of New York, 7:00
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Muppets Take Manhattan (Frank Oz, 1984), $15, 8:00

Friday, August 13
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Out of the Shadows Panel: A Conversation about the Henson Festivals, with Leslee Asch, Cheryl Henson, Dan Hurlin, Manuel Moran, and Michael Romanyshyn, 4:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Slam / Cabaret: Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner, with Bruce Cannon, Piedmont Bluz, and Valerie and Benedict Turner, 8:00

Saturday, August 14
Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am
Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 11:00 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
NIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 1, with Jacqueline Wade, Kuang-Yu Fong, and Ginew Benton, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, noon
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00
Los Colores de Frida / The Colors of Frida by SEA, 1:00
The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 1:00
Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba y Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
Teatro SEA’s Theatre Book Series Presentation, 2:30
Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 3:00
Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 4:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Puppet States by Paulette Richards, 5:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
The Puppetry Guild of Greater NY presents . . . The Bawdy Naughty Puppet Cabaret, 8:00

Sunday, August 15
Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am
Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 11:00 am
The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 11:00 am
Giant Puppet Encounter & Mascot Encounter, 11:30 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00
Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 1:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 2: República Dominicana and Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
The Pura Belpré Project by SEA, 3:00
Harlem River Drive by Bruce Cannon, 3:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Once Upon a time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 5:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Dance Party, 8:00

Tuesday, August 17
A Conversation with Vincent Anthony, hosted by Dr. Manuel Morán and John Ludwig, 7:00

Thursday, August 19
Puppetry 101 with Aretta Baumgartner, 7:00

Friday, August 20
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00

Saturday, August 21
Puppetry Museums around the World Panel, noon

Tuesday, August 24
Puppetry and Its Healing Properties in Therapy, hosted by Erica Scandoval and Karen Ciego, 7:00

Thursday, August 26
UNIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 2, with Monxo Lopez, Paulette Richards, Jungmin Song, and Edna Bland, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, 7:00

Friday, August 27
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 8:00

Saturday, August 28
Conversations with Puppet Fringe Artists and Troupes in English, noon

Tuesday, August 31
“Glocal” Rethinking, American Puppetry: Opening Eyes Wider by UNIMA-USA’s World Encyclopedia Puppetry Arts, with Karen Smith and Kathy Foley, 7:00

SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY

Bruce Springsteen helps reopen Broadway with revival of Tony-winning one-man show (photo by Rob DeMartin)

SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th Street between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Friday/Saturday through September 4, $75-$850 (Lucky Seat lottery four days before each show)
www.jujamcyn.com
brucespringsteen.net/broadway

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Bruce Springsteen was driving in Sea Bright, New Jersey, smoke from the fallen Twin Towers visible in the distance, when an unidentified man pulled up alongside him and called out, “We need you, Bruce.” He responded with The Rising, a 2002 record that intelligently explored personal and communal loss, celebrated heroes, and looked to a brighter future. This spring, amid debates about how and when Broadway would reopen following the long pandemic lockdown, Jujamycyn president and Boss fan Jordan Roth contacted Bruce and asked if he would revive his intimate one-man show, Springsteen on Broadway, for a limited run over the summer. Broadway needed him. The musician and author responded with a slightly reconfigured update of the show, which had been awarded a special Tony for a “once-in-a-lifetime theatergoing experience”; in his acceptance speech, Springsteen said, “This is deeply appreciated. Thank you for making me feel so welcome on the block. Being part of the Broadway community has been a great thrill and an honor and one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.”

The 140-minute show has moved from the 975-seat Walter Kerr to the St. James, which has nearly double the capacity at 1,710. I caught Springsteen on Broadway twice in its original form, each show somewhat different, with Bruce’s wife, Patti Scialfa, appearing at one of them, which alters the setlist. For this revival, Springsteen has made several key changes, from one of the songs he sings with Patti, which he had hoped Elvis Presley would record (the King died before hearing it), to the finale, a tune from his latest album, Letter to You, a bittersweet eulogy to lost friends, relatives, and E Street Band members that feels even more appropriate given the suffering of the last sixteen months.

Bruce Springsteen shifts between guitar and piano in slightly revamped revival (photo by Rob DeMartin)

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests over racial injustice, Springsteen has also added “American Skin (41 Shots),” his 2001 song about the police killing of unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York City in 1999. When I saw Bruce and the E Street Band perform the song at Shea Stadium in October 2003, numerous people in the crowd, as well as police officers and some security staff, stood and turned their back to the stage. There were no such protests at the St. James (although there were a handful of anti-vaxxers outside the theater on opening night calling the show discriminatory because all attendees had to be vaccinated).

This time around, Springsteen on Broadway, which is adapted from his bestselling 2016 memoir, Born to Run, is a much more emotional affair. The night I saw it, July 6, Bruce had to pause and wipe away tears at least four times; there was weeping throughout the theater as well. Springsteen spoke poignantly about Walter and Raymond Cichon from the 1960s Jersey Shore band the Motifs, Walter going to Vietnam and never coming home; his working-class father, who struggled with mental illness and often hid behind alcohol; late E Streeters Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici; and, most heartrending, his beloved mother, Adele, who is now ten years into dementia but, Bruce shared, still recognizes him when he sees her and perks up when she hears music. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Bruce, at the piano, sang, “If Pa’s eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true / You couldn’t stop me from looking but you kept me from crawlin’ through / It’s a funny old world, Ma, where a little boy’s wishes come true / Well, I got a few in my pocket and a special one just for you.” The story evoked the heartbreak of so many who were unable to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes during the crisis, saying farewell via cellphone if at all.

As tender and stirring as those moments were, Bruce also injects plenty of humor, mostly of the self-deprecating type, particularly about his November 2020 arrest for drunken and reckless driving. “I had to go to Zoom court,” he says. “My case was the United States of America vs. Bruce Springsteen. That’s always comforting to hear, that the entire nation is aligned against you.” The charges were later dismissed, but the police theme is a playful new thread in the narrative.

Once again, in New York City’s time of need, Springsteen has responded, helping us deal with a devastating health crisis that has so far claimed more than 610,000 American lives, even as a deadly variant makes its way through the country at this very moment. It’s the right show at the right time, with only two cast members, no set changes, and Bruce’s trusted guitar tech (Kevin Buell). All ticket holders must provide proof of vaccination in order to enter the theater. When I saw the show, masks were optional, and very few wore them, but masks are now required for everyone. Springsteen has taken a few weeks off while his daughter, Jessica, competes in equestrian jumping at the Tokyo Olympics (winning a team silver medal), but he and Patti will be back August 17 for the last run of performances, lighting up what has been a dark, empty Broadway. Bruce has responded yet again when New York City called.

Vs.

VS.
Mabou Mines
August 6-8, suggested donation $10
www.maboumines.org

Founded in 1970 by JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow, Mabou Mines has presented multidisciplinary experimental works at such New York City venues as the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Kitchen, Paula Cooper Gallery, Theater for the New City, the Performing Garage, La MaMa, the Public Theater, the Skirball Center, Classic Stage, HERE Arts Center, St. Ann’s, New York Theatre Workshop, and Abrons Arts Center during its legendary, influential half-century history. Amid a pandemic lockdown, it has now turned its attention to Zoom for its latest production, Carl Hancock Rux’s virtual Vs., continuing August 6-8. The fifty-minute piece was written by Rux and directed by Mallory Catlett, the two new co-artistic directors of the East Village–based company.

Vs. channels Franz Kafka, Hélène Cixous, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin through an absurdist lens as four figures are brought before an interrogator, answering the same repetitive bureaucratic questions with a sly didacticism and a tongue-in-cheek pedantry amid the language of rhetoric —or the rhetoric of language. The four witnesses are played by Becca Blackwell, David Thomson, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and Perry Jung; the audience serves as the visual component of the monotone interrogator, who is heard off camera. Beware of your Zoom background, because you will occasionally be front and center, your face and body covered by a black silhouette (unless you move), as if you are the anonymous interviewer.

Innocuous questions are answered with mini-essays that will make you feel like you’re back in grad school, except now with a sense of humor. When asked if they were born in November, the first witness testifies, “Not if we are to consider an opposition to phallogocentricism and the hegemonic ideals contained in patriarchal culture uniting theory and fantasy, challenging such discourse within the frameworks of a constitution blown up by law. Certainly not if we are to consider language as a central trope and your appropriation and adaptation of language, or challenge to, genre (as language); or the anarchic strategy of regulating forces of hegemonic and phallogocentric culture encoded in language and hierarchical oppositions or distinctions between what I am and what you are; between what is black or white, man or woman. Not if we are to ignore the elementary rubrics of binary principles which lie at the heart of most human structures.”

If you didn’t already know you were in for something different, you’ll start realizing it when the second witness gives the same exact answers as the previous one, word for word.

The third witness responds only in Spanish, giving the most emotional answers (which are translated in the chat). Asked about being born in November, they declare, “Why do you keep asking me if I was born in November? Who cares? I said I don’t know. Ay, what are you, crazy? . . . Stop asking me where I am from and when I was born; did I ask you personal questions?”

Four witnesses make their case in Mabou Mines’ virtual Vs.

Finally, the last witness, asked if they want a glass of water, responds, “God forbid, if there be a God, I prefer something other than water. Something untainted by conservatives, that would be cool. Let’s both have one. You can tell so much about a person by what zie, zim, zir, zieself, sie, sie, hir, hirs, hirself, ey, em, eir, eirs, eirself, ve, ver, vis, vers, verself, tey, ter, tem, ters, tersel, e, em, eir, eirs, emself are drinking. Whether the drinker is loved, or has loved at all. Whether the drinker is now or long ago. Whether the drinker is drinking first harvest, or near the end. Bird of prey? Predator?”

During each interrogation, digital designer Onome Ekeh fiddles with the technology, playing around with color and resolution, making the witnesses go out of focus or disappear into backgrounds, surrounding them with random objects, or creating multiple versions of them. Just as the four subjects refuse to take the questions seriously, they also won’t let their identities be clearly delineated. We learn nothing about who they are, why they are there, or what the interrogator is trying to find out, although the truth seems to be at the center of it all, whatever that is. (Am I referring to the truth or the center there? I honestly don’t know.) “The danger is you, and this council, and this hearing, and this senate, and its polity, paying too much attention to a conciliatory approach to existence,” one witness says. “The first shall go. The last shall come. Age comes. The body withers. Truth comes as itself, a dissembling.”

Throughout the show, you can watch the reactions of your fellow audience members. While I found much of the play very funny in a sarcastic, screw-authority kind of way, it appeared that I was the only one laughing. It’s certainly not a comedy, nor is it a purely academic look at an insecure future. Well, actually, it might be that. In a statement about the production, Rux, a poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, actor, director, singer, and songwriter, explains, “The last four years of American — and for that matter, global — politics has revealed repetitive yet unprecedented abject horror as it relates to historical oppression and colonialism. Vs. attempts to engage the audience in a tribunal of sociopolitical rifts; a discourse that may or may not attempt to lay blame on a nation state and that ultimately reveals the nation state to be ‘us,’ or, rather, ‘we the people.’ The questions it attempts to address are complicated and yet quite simple: What is the history of oppression? Who are the oppressed? What is the final and definitive language of freedom, justice, and liberty for all? What are our tools for human survival?”

Rux (Talk, The Baptism) is not joking around there, making important points about where we are as a culture in the twenty-first century. The same points are dealt with in the play, just not so directly. If you take it completely seriously, you might be bored with the repetition and the apparent lack of advancement of the narrative. But seek out the satirical bent to better appreciate its unique style. Otherwise, God help us all, if there is a God.

TICKET ALERT: RETURN THE MOON

Tickets for Third Rail Projects’ virtual, interactive Return the Moon go on sale August 6

Who: Third Rail Projects
What: Livestreamed interactive online production
Where: Third Rail Projects Zoom
When: August 11 – September 30, $15, $42, $67
Why: What is a company that specializes in site-specific immersive theater supposed to do during a pandemic lockdown? Brooklyn-based Third Rail Projects has come up with an answer: Return the Moon, a live, participatory Zoom presentation that begins previews August 11 for a September 8 opening. Conceived and directed by Zach Morris, the seventy-five-minute multimedia production explores remembrance and recurrence, featuring Alberto Denis, Joshua Gonzales, Justin Lynch, and Tara O’Con, with choreography by Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and the cast, sound and original music by Sean Hagerty, and visual design by Morris. “I was curious how we might create a ‘remote’ project that felt inviting and intuitive, communal and personal,” Bessie winner Morris said in a statement. “I wondered what inspiration might be found in this now ubiquitous platform that has become kind of an artifact and metaphor for the dissonance of distanced connection. I was interested in what it meant to craft a work specifically for this medium that would acknowledge and engage with its strengths, its all-too-familiar challenges, and also capitalize on the opportunities that it could afford that would be otherwise impossible in a traditional theater setting.”

Third Rail has previously taken adventurous audiences down the rabbit hole in a former parochial school in Then She Fell, behind the scenes at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater in Ghost Light, and to a beach resort in a Bushwick warehouse in The Grand Paradise. You experience Return the Moon from the confines of your own home and are encouraged, but not required, to participate in the shaping of the narrative, which deals with an old fable about the moon; in addition, afterward, you will receive a package in the mail continuing the exchange between audience and performer. Tickets go on sale August 6 but are limited to sixty per show, so act quick, because they are sure to go fast for this popular, innovative company. The standard price is $42, but you can pay it forward by contributing $67, with the difference helping subsidize $15 tickets for those who cannot afford more.

RESTART STAGES: LOOK WHO’S COMING TO DINNER / BECOMING OTHELLO / DARK DISABLED STORIES

RESTART STAGES
Lincoln Center, the Isabel and Peter Malkin Stage at Hearst Plaza
Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner
Tuesday, August 3, free with RSVP, 7:00
Debra Ann Byrd, Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey
Wednesday, August 4, free with RSVP, 7:00
Ryan J. Haddad, Dark Disabled Stories
Thursday, August 5, free with RSVP, 7:00
www.lincolncenter.org

Lincoln Center’s ambitious Restart Stages program, welcoming back audiences with free outdoor multidisciplinary performances, continues this week with one-time-only shows by three distinct creators, available through the TodayTix lottery. On Tuesday, August 3, at 7:00, Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland serves up Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, a new take on Stanley Kramer’s 1967 film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The movie, which was nominated for ten Oscars and won for Best Actress and Best Original Story and Screenplay, is about an interracial couple portrayed by Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton who are celebrating their engagement by visiting her parents, a liberal couple played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn who are not exactly thrilled at first to see who their daughter will be marrying. SBB has been busy during the pandemic, presenting such works as Kolonial for BAC, This Moment for Works and Process at the Guggenheim, Unnatural Contradictions for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Mondays at Two, exploring safe spaces, isolation, racial injustice, and the coronavirus crisis, in addition to a three-week residency at the Yard on Martha’s Vineyard that culminated in the dance-theater installation Embarqued: Stories of Soil.

Debra Ann Byrd brings her one-woman show, Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey, to Restart Stages this week (photo by Christina Lane / Shakespeare and Company)

If you missed Debra Ann Byrd’s Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey at Shakespeare & Company’s Roman Garden Theatre earlier this month, you can catch it on Wednesday, August 4, at 7:00 on the Isabel and Peter Malkin Stage at Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center. Directed by Tina Packard, the one-woman show of song and text details Byrd’s experiences as a Black woman attempting to be a classical actress, detailing a life that has included foster care, teen pregnancy, trauma, abuse, and single parenting on a path to play Othello (while also becoming the founding artistic director of the Harlem Shakespeare Festival).

In February 2021, Ryan J. Haddad’s one-man show, Hi, Are You Single?, streamed from Woolly Mammoth, where it was filmed live onstage in front of a limited, socially distanced, masked audience made up of members of the staff and crew, one of the first to do that; the bittersweet autobiographical piece follows Haddad, who has cerebral palsy and requires a walker, as he searches for love in all the wrong places. Haddad can currently be seen in “Wings and Rings,” a short film he made with set designers Emmie Finckel and Riccardo Hernández for Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon’s installation The Watering Hole at the Signature. In the ten-minute work, Haddad relives a terrifying moment from his childhood involving swimming in a pool. On Thursday, August 5, at 7:00, at Restart Stages, Haddad will premiere his latest solo show, Dark Disabled Stories, in which he discusses a crosstown bus, a bathroom stall, and Gramercy Park as he encounters strangers and confronts ableism wherever he goes.

THE CORDELIA DREAM: A PERFORMANCE ON SCREEN

Danielle Ryan and Stephen Brennan are exceptional as a bitter daughter and father in streaming revival of Marina Carr’s The Cordelia Dream

THE CORDELIA DREAM
Irish Rep Online
Daily through August 8, suggested donation $25
irishrep.org

Summer theater in New York City is dominated by outdoor Shakespeare presentations, including Shakespeare in the Parking Lot’s Two Noble Kinsmen, the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Seize the King, the Public Theater’s Merry Wives of Windsor at the Delacorte and the Mobile Unit’s Shakespeare: Call and Response, and NY Classical’s King Lear with a happy ending.

One of the best productions is taking place indoors, but not in a theater with an audience. I wouldn’t be giving anything away if I told you that there is no happy ending in the Irish Rep’s virtual revival of Marina Carr’s The Cordelia Dream, streaming online through August 8. The brutal, relentless two-act, ninety-minute play was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and debuted in 2008 at Wilton’s Music Hall in London. Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly of the Irish Rep, in association with casting director and producer Bonnie Timmermann, enlisted director Joe O’Byrne to helm a new version filmed at the New Theatre in Dublin, as part of the innovative company’s continuing onscreen works made during the pandemic.

The play takes place in a dark, eerie room where an elderly man (Stephen Brennan) lives alone, drinking by himself and playing his piano. He is visited one day by his long-estranged daughter (Danielle Ryan); they have not seen each other in many years, and their discomfort and hostility are immediately apparent in their initial exchange.

Man: You.
Woman: Yes. Me.
Man: Well.
Woman: It wasn’t easy . . . seeking you out.
Man: Wasn’t it?
Woman: I stayed away as long as I could.
Man: You think I’m going to die soon?
Woman: Maybe.
Man: You want to kiss and make up before the event?
Woman: Some people visit each other all the time.
Man: I’m not some people. You of all people should know that.
Woman: Can I come in or not?

There is no love lost between father and daughter; it’s as if an older Cordelia has come to see her aging father, both filled with resentment, no reconciliation in sight. “Love needs a streak of darkness. The day is for solitude. Morning especially. Morning is for death,” he says. “And afternoons?” she asks. “At your age they’re for transgressions, at mine they’re for remorse,” he replies. “You know about remorse?” she wonders. “I’m an expert on it,” he answers.

Both characters are revealed as cold and cruel as details of their lives emerge in the corrosive conversation. He is an extremely talented but failed composer attempting to create his magnum opus before he dies, while she is a famous composer who has not been able to enjoy her success. He accuses her of wasting her gifts, claiming his superiority, unashamed of his hatred of her. He is glad that none of her children are named after him; he even criticizes the wine she brought. “You are very mediocre,” he declares. “Does mediocre need ‘very’ in front of it?” she asks. “When talking about you. Yes, it does,” he replies with bitterness.

She is there to say her piece, not about to cower from him. “You haven’t left me alone,” she says. “You’ve retreated to this sulphurous corner to gather venom for the next assault. You? Leave me alone? You haunt me.”

She has also come to tell him about a dream she has had, about their life and death, about the four howls and the five “never”s in Shakespeare’s grand tragedy. “You think you’re Cordelia to my Lear. No, my dear. You’re more Regan and Goneril spun,” he spits at her. “And you’re no Lear,” she shoots back, soon leaving.

She returns five years later, but it is not quite the same. His mental faculties are decreasing, not unlike the mad Lear’s, thinking her to be the goat-faced, dog-hearted dark lady of his nightmares, a reference to the character Shakespeare addresses in Sonnet 130 and others, whom he loves but cannot outright compliment, disparaging her instead. He recalls moments from his past but is foggy. “Your self-delusion is complete,” she says. “Men should not have daughters,” he opines. The acerbic cat-and-mouse dialogue continues as they eviscerate each other till nothing’s left.

Fiercely directed by Joe O’Byrne (McKeague and O’Brien present “The Rising,” Frank Pig Says Hello), The Cordelia Dream is a merciless, unyielding depiction of an unredeemable relationship between a father and daughter. With biting language, Carr (Woman and Scarecrow, Marble) brilliantly compares the creation of a work of art to the birth of a child and all the responsibilities that are supposed to accompany it. The play is intimately photographed and edited by Emmy winner Nick Ryan, with ghostly set design by Robert Ballagh and sound and original music by Emmy nominee David Downes, the actors naturally lit by a few lamps and a window that offers brief reprieves from the enveloping darkness that makes it feel like it is all a dream.

Brennan (A Life, The Pinter Landscape) commands the screen with an immense presence, his white-haired, white-bearded character skewering his daughter with relish, unafraid of any consequences. Ryan (Harry Wild, Wild Mountain Thyme), who made her professional debut in 2007 playing Cordelia and Brigitte in the Edinburgh Fringe award winner Food, portrays the lost woman with a graceful finesse as she tries to unburden herself of the many ways she claims he destroyed her life. The harrowing work hits even deeper at a time when loved ones are reuniting after the long pandemic lockdown, with hugs and kisses, smiles of relief and unabashed joy, none of which is evident in these two characters who harbor a disturbing, apparently unsalvageable history.