this week in theater

GHOSTING: A PERFORMANCE ON SCREEN

Who: Anne O’Riordan
What: One-woman online play
Where: #IrishRepOnline
When: Through July 4, free with RSVP (suggested donation $25)
Why: The Irish Rep continues to be the most consistently innovative and creative company on the planet during the Covid-19 crisis with Anne O’Riordan and Jamie Beamish’s Ghosting, its latest “performance on screen.” The one-woman show debuted in London and made its Irish premiere at Theatre Royal in Waterford in 2019; O’Riordan returned to that stage in April 2020 for a livestreamed production that is now available on demand through July 4 via the Irish Rep, in conjunction with Throwin Shapes. O’Riordan plays Sí, a young Irish woman working in London when a strange visitor materializes in her apartment in the middle of the night. “I lie in bed and think. I know no one likes that these days but it’s ok to be on your own, with just your thoughts,” she tells us early on. “I like it. In the dark. No lights, no sound, no one to annoy me. You can lie there and hold your breath and wonder; is this it? Is this what it will be like to be dead? That’s all I was doing last night, the same thing I’ve done every night since I came to London five years ago. I was lying there awake, on my own. That’s fine sure. Who else do I want? Who else do I need? I don’t need anyone else in my life. I was thinking that exact thought last night when I realised that someone was in the bedroom with me.”

It turns out to be Mark Kelly, her onetime boyfriend who had ghosted her six years before, suddenly refusing to see her or speak with her, with no explanation. The next morning, Sí gets a text from her sister, Aisling, letting her know that Kelly died two days before. Sí says, “I feel a huge knot in my stomach. I don’t know why I’m even remotely bothered, sure he’s been dead to me for six years. He’s been blocked out of my mind for . . . well, until last night. When he . . .” At the spur of the moment, she decides to fly back home to attend the funeral, going back to her sister and father and hometown that she has been ghosting ever since she left for London. Once there, she learns more about her family and Kelly, complicating her situation and providing just as many questions as answers.

The seventy-five-minute play was written by O’Riordan and Beamish, who also serves as director, composer, and sound and projections designer, with lighting by Dermot Quinn and live video editing by Seán O’Sullivan. O’Riordan (Call the Midwife, Doctors) traverses the dark, empty set, the camera sometimes coming in for a close-up, then pulling back for a longer shot as if we’re sitting in the audience, which is empty. The projections take us from Sí’s office, the airport, and a smokey bar to a funeral home and the beach as Sí deals with a London colleague she calls Hobbit Tom; Laura, a high school acquaintance; the tall Lorcan, who works at the funeral parlor; and Mark’s mother, who has a surprising story to share. All the while, Sí considers whether she should see her father for the first time in what has been too long.

O’Riordan is mesmerizing as she examines her life not unlike how many of us have done over the last year and a half, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered us in our homes, eliminated public gatherings, kept us far from loved ones, and was the cause of too many funerals. “We never really go away, do we?” the lonely Sí asks. “There’s always something left behind. Never mind them ghosts. I don’t believe in them anyway.” But with plays like Ghosting, we can still believe in the power of theater to help us face the world and get through the darkness.

IT’S ONLY A PLAY

A terrific cast yucks it up onstage in George Street Playhouse’s virtual version of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play (cinematography by Michael Boylan)

IT’S ONLY A PLAY
George Street Playhouse online
Through July 4, $33
georgestreetplayhouse.org

“I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter,” Monty Python cofounder John Cleese said in the 2001 BBC series The Human Face. There is no human reaction as infectious as laughing, particularly in a theater where strangers gather to be entertained; one’s enjoyment of a comedic movie or play often relies at least in part by the sounds of glee emerging from fellow audience members. So what to do during a pandemic lockdown, when connection with others in dark spaces is impossible? The George Street Playhouse has the answer in its hysterical virtual revival of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play.

The New Jersey troupe, founded in 1974, previously moved into the home of board member Sharon Karmazin for a pair of excellent one-person shows, Theresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates, starring Andréa Burns primarily in a bedroom, and Becky Mode’s Fully Committed, with Maulik Pancholy portraying forty roles in the basement. That was followed by Nia Vardalos’s Tiny Beautiful Things, which featured four actors throughout Karmazin’s lake house in the Garden State. Now the company is back onstage with seven actors for its uproarious version of McNally’s 1982 farce, which made its Broadway debut in 2014 in director Jack O’Brien’s all-star iteration at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. That production featured Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, Matthew Broderick, Rupert Grint, and Micah Stock, which it helps to know as references abound in this one.

Laughter might be contagious, but even sitting alone at my computer, I was exuberantly howling at the two-hour show, surprising myself at how often I let out loud snickers, snorts, and guffaws at the merriment happening onstage at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. It’s Only a Play takes place at an opening-night party at the ritzy home of first-time Broadway producer Julia Budder (Christine Toy Johnson) as everyone awaits the reviews, primarily Ben Brantley’s assessment in the New York Times. Julia has put her money behind playwright Peter Austin’s (Andy Grotelueschen) The Golden Egg, which could be theater gold or lay a giant egg.

They are joined by the show’s prima donna, Virginia Noyes (Julie Halston), a fading actress who can’t get a job in Hollywood anymore; actor James Wicker (Zach Shaffer), the star of a successful if empty television sitcom Out on a Limb who is best friends with Austin but nonetheless passed on appearing in the new play, which was written for him; Sir Frank Finger (Greg Cuellar), an eccentric British director who is so sick and tired of being praised for everything he does that he’s hoping to finally have a turkey on his hands; brash critic Ira Drew (Triney Sandoval), who desperately wants to be part of the in crowd; and Gus P. Head (Doug Harris), a doofy wannabe “actor-slash-singer-slash-dancer-slash-comedian-slash-performance artist-slash-mime” who has just moved to New York City and is handling the coats for the evening. Rapid-fire hilarity ensues with harsh needling, heaps of insincerity and phoniness, and plenty of ego-driven inside jokes that had me rolling with laughter.

“I don’t have to call in again for another couple of hours,” Noyes, who is wearing a house arrest ankle bracelet, tells Wicker and Head. “For a while they had me checking in every fifteen minutes. What did they think I was going to do? Kill somebody else? It was an accident. It wasn’t like they were both my parents.”

Upon entering the bedroom, Austin declares, “All my life, I dreamed that they would yell, ‘Author, author’ when I walked into my opening-night party and they did, only it was for Tom Stoppard, who was right behind me.”

George Street Playhouse returns to its home in It’s Only a Play (cinematography by Michael Boylan)

On the phone complaining to his agent, Wicker says, “Thank God for my series or I might’ve had to tell Peter the truth about his godawful play. But do you think I got even so much as a mention in the program? I only created the lead in his one and only hit, and it’s as if I never existed. The egos in this business. I know they don’t close plays after one performance, but in this case they should make an exception. What’s the word for a mercy killing? Euthanasia. They do it for people; why not plays?”

The show is directed by Kevin Cahoon with a joyful franticness, with cinematography and editing by Michael Boylan that makes it feel more like a play than a film, although occasional close-ups look awkward. David L. Arsenault’s set is glamorous, with lovely costumes by Alejo Vietti. The bright lighting is by Alan C. Edwards, with sound and music by Ryan Rumery. The cast is outstanding, reveling in the nonstop barrage of McNally’s gorgeous words; four-time Drama Desk nominee Halston gloriously chews up everything in her path, while Tony nominee Grotelueschen has a glow in his eyes as he waxes poetic about theater with a capital T. Sandoval can barely contain himself as the bitter critic hobnobbing in the inner sanctums, while Harris excels as the star-struck greenhorn who has a penchant for using terms of endearment for people he doesn’t know. Shaffer has a ball with the bulk of the most acerbic lines, Cuellar digs into Finger’s oddities with verve, and Johnson is delightful as a naive but genuine producer who regularly bungles the English language.

The stream begins with a shot of a curtain descending on an empty stage as a gentle piano version of Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” plays, but the music soon swells with a full orchestra as the title and author name in ornate lettering take over the screen and the curtain rises, revealing the fab set while paying tribute to the beloved McNally (Master Class, Love! Valour! Compassion!), who died in March 2020 of Covid-19 at the age of eighty-one. “When I saw a marquee go dark tonight,” Austin later says, “I thought, ‘It’s important that those lights keep burning. New York without the theater is Newark.’” In this case, that’s an unfair knock against Newark, which is less than thirty miles from New Brunswick, where It’s Only a Play was filmed and George Street is based, but it does serve as a delicious amuse bouche as the lights return to Broadway this fall and we’ll once again be able to laugh with one another in person.

BLINDNESS

Blindness plunges in-person audiences into literal and metaphorical darkness (photo by Helen Maybanks)

BLINDNESS
Daryl Roth Theatre
101 East Fifteenth St. at Union Square
Tuesday – Sunday through September 5, $116 per pair
www.blindnessevent.com
www.darylroththeatre.com

The first in-person, extended-run indoor theatrical presentation in New York since restrictions lifted has arrived, and it’s a doozy. British playwright Simon Stephens’s adaptation of Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago’s 1995 dystopian novel, Blindness, was long in the works prior to the coronavirus crisis, but its subject matter and staging are tailor-made for this precise moment in time.

The seventy-minute socially distanced sound and light installation debuted at the Donmar Warehouse last August and opened last night at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square. Originally conceived as a fully staged production with a cast of a hundred by Tony winner Stephens and director Walter Meierjohann, it has been reimagined for the pandemic. A maximum of eighty-six masked people are allowed in the theater, seated in chairs in pods of two, either facing the same or opposite directions; each couple is at least six feet away from other pairs.

The set consists of dozens of horizontal and vertical fluorescent lights hanging from above, forming a kind of abstract traffic pattern, warmly changing colors from red, blue, and green to yellow and orange; as the audience enters, the sounds of cars can be heard. The otherwise empty, ominous set is by Lizzie Clachan, with lighting by Jessica Hung Han Yun. Every audience member receives a pair of headphones through which the foreboding tale unfolds. The text is performed by Olivier-winning English actress Juliet Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply; Death and the Maiden), who starts out as the Storyteller before becoming the protagonist. “If you can see, look,” the Storyteller begins. “If you can look, observe.”

The dark parable immerses you in an epidemic in which a man driving down the street suddenly and inexplicably goes blind — everything turns white — and after he goes to an ophthalmologist, the doctor and several of his patients soon lose their sight as well. The contagion spreads, and only the doctor’s wife retains her vision; she takes over the narrative, which turns into an apocalyptic nightmare in which the nation’s leaders turn their back on its citizenry. “If there was a government, it was a government of the blind trying to rule the blind,” the doctor’s never-named wife says. “I didn’t know if there was going to be a future. We needed to decide how we were going to live.”

Juliet Stevenson comes face-to-face with Trevor the binaural microphone while recording Blindness (photo courtesy Donmar Warehouse)

The audio was recorded using a binaural microphone, called Trevor, that is shaped like a human head, similar to the one Simon McBurney used in his 2016 Broadway show, The Encounter. Stevenson’s physical proximity to Trevor affects how we ultimately hear her words, giving it a three-dimensional quality. At times it seems that the doctor’s wife is far away, her voice muffled in the distance, while a minute later you can practically feel her hot breath on your neck as she whispers in your ear, as if she is standing right next to you. It can be unnerving, and it’s supposed to be, melding well with the story, which grows harsher and harsher. The genius sound design is by Ben and Max Ringham, who previously used binaural recordings and silent disco headphones for Ella Hickson’s spy thriller, Anna, at the National Theatre in May 2019. You might be sitting in a space with no stage, no furniture, no props, only chairs and lights, but Stephens’s writing is so descriptive, and Stevenson’s reading so clear and poetic, that you’ll think you are in the quarantine bunker where the blind characters are struggling to survive.

Although the theater does transform into total darkness for several scenes, random flashes of white lights in the second half are distracting, with no apparent connection to the story except to perhaps evoke an instant of white blindness. Depending on where you are sitting, you might be facing another audience member, which can be unsettling; usually at the theater, the only people in front of you who you might make eye contact with are the actors onstage. That said, it’s fabulously exciting to be in a theater with other people, experiencing something together. In addition, everyone gets a flashlight to turn on in case they require technical or personal assistance, although that can be disruptive, particularly when it’s pitch black and someone suddenly flicks the light on. There is no intermission, no bathroom breaks, no gathering in the lobby to chat; if you have to leave for some reason, there is no reentry. And speaking of distractions, the night I was there, I did not see anyone on their cell phone or hear any ringers go off. Sheer bliss.

Blindness, which was adapted into a 2007 play by Godlight Theatre Company, a 2008 film by Fernando Meirelles starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Danny Glover, and a 2011 opera by Anno Schreier and Kerstin Maria Pöhler — Saramago also wrote a sequel, Seeing, in 2004 — is not simply a technological marvel that explores the breakdown of society in a health crisis that is all too familiar today; it examines how we as a culture interpret how and what we see. It’s merely coincidental that we are watching a show about a pandemic, involving food insecurity, economic distress, governmental refusal to take action, and so much grief and loss, during a pandemic. Blindness delves into the interconnectedness of humanity amid greed, selfishness, and a metaphorical blindness that can lead to racism, hate, militarism, and othering. Stephens follows Saramago’s style of not using proper names for characters or locations; this could be happening to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

In writing the play, Stephens (Sea Wall, Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), who is partially sighted, consulted with Hannah Thompson, a partially sighted professor of French and Critical Disability Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, who explained ocularcentrism to him, the belief that sight is the most privileged of the five senses and how misunderstood having less vision is. (She prefers the term “vision gain” to “vision loss.”) Early on, the Storyteller says, “Who would have believed it? Seen at a glance, the man’s eyes seemed healthy. The iris looked bright, luminous. The sclera white, as compact as porcelain. The eyes wide open, the wrinkled skin of the face, the eyebrows suddenly screwed up.” As this immersive sound and light installation reminds us, taking life, and all its wonders, for granted comes at your own risk.

THEATER OF WAR FRONTLINE: MICHIGAN

Who: Taylor Schilling, Bill Camp, David Strathairn, Nyasha Hatendi, Bryan Doerries
What: Livestreamed Zoom reading and discussion
Where: Theater of War Zoom
When: Wednesday, June 30, free with RSVP, 8:30
Why: Theater of War continues its extraordinary pandemic programming with “Frontline,” an evening of dramatic readings featuring Taylor Schilling, Bill Camp, David Strathairn, and Nyasha Hatendi of scenes from ancient Greek plays by Sophocles (Ajax, Oedipus the King, Philoctetes, Women of Trachis) that relate to today’s health care crisis. Following the reading, there will be a discussion facilitated by director, translator, adapter, and artistic director Bryan Doerries focusing on nurses, doctors, first responders, and other health care professionals, hosted by Michigan Health & Hospital Association and Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Care Network of Michigan. Admission is free; if you haven’t seen any of Theater of War’s events, now is the time; among their other recent presentations are The Oedipus Project exploring the pandemic and the climate crisis, Antigone in Ferguson looking at racialized police violence, End of Life and King Lear Project examining caregiving and death, and Poetry for the Pandemic.

COMMUNION

Stacy Ross guides a live audience through a Zoom gathering in Communion

COMMUNION
American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.)
Through June 27, $60
www.act-sf.org

“Can we build a true sense of community over Zoom in one evening?” Stacy Ross asks in Christopher Chen’s Communion, a live, interactive presentation from A.C.T. in San Francisco. Continuing through June 27, the seventy-minute Zoom production is hosted by the popular Bay Area actress, who has played such characters as Hedda Gabler, Malvolio, Clytemnestra, Ophelia, Candida, and Leni Riefenstahl. In Communion, she’s herself — or is she? — speaking directly into the camera from a small, cluttered room. She wears a green felt hat and braids, asking us questions, discussing bliss and tacos, and considering Zoom as a tool for intimacy.

Prior to the show, attendees are given several prompts, one involving a guiding principle you have, another a person you’ve allowed to get inside your head in a bad way. Volunteers come forward and share their answers, with Ross commiserating. Viewers are also sent to breakout rooms to talk about the idea of “communion” in smaller groups. Thus, a good part of your experience will be impacted by how much you and others choose to participate. Ross may be a consummate host, but she can control only so much of what happens.

Obie winner Chen (The Hundred Flowers Project, The Headlands) and Tony-winning director Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) navigate through Zoom fatigue — with America opening up, is the end coming for entertainment via little onscreen boxes? — with a wink and a nod, holding back a surprise (which one of the people in my breakout room guessed). To say any more would be to say too much.

Most Zoom theater has been created as an alternative to live, in-person shows, where strangers congregate in dark spaces, suspending disbelief as they are temporarily transported to different worlds. Communion was made specifically for Zoom, challenging us to look at who we are, as individuals and as theater lovers, as we come out of a pandemic that has changed us all, for better or worse.

THE DARK MASTER

THE DARK MASTER
Japan Society
333 East 47th St.
June 23-28, $45
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Kuro Tanino’s The Dark Master was originally scheduled to be a fully staged production at Japan Society in January 2021 as part of a four-city US tour. However, because of the pandemic lockdown, Japan Society artistic director Yoko Shioya suggested that Tanino reimagine the piece for virtual reality. The result is a thoroughly satisfying and uniquely tasty experience, a delectable treat for the senses.

Continuing through June 28, The Dark Master is presented to ten audience members at a time, sitting in individual mirrored cubicles on Japan Society’s stage. Wearing headphones and VR headsets (and facemasks), you are taken into a tiny, claustrophobic restaurant where you are served food by a grouchy owner-chef (Kiyobumi Kaneko). He decides that you are to become the next cook, and your training begins as hungry customers come in and sit at the counter, excited for the carefully prepared fare.

Inspired by first-person video games and an indie manga written by Marei Karibu and illustrated by Haruki Izumi, The Dark Master immerses you in a mysterious world that can be as funny as it is creepy. Kaneko is a hoot as a surly smoker who seems relatively disinterested in what he’s doing yet creates miraculous dishes that not only look good but smell great — be prepared for a multisensory adventure. The virtual reality extends about 180 degrees, so be sure to turn to your right and left and up and down to take it all in; you are also given hands that hold a menu, pour a drink, and bring the victuals to your mouth, which could produce a sort of personal AMSR encounter A brief video at the end takes you behind the scenes of how some of it was done.

A sculptor, painter, and former psychiatrist, Tanino (Frustrating Picture Book for Adults, Fortification of Smiles) literally and figuratively gets into your head for forty-five minutes as performers from his experimental theater company, Niwa Gekidan Penino (NGP), including Kaneko, F. O. Pereira Koichiro, and Bobmi Hidaka, traipse through the restaurant, with narration by Saika Ouchi. The dialogue has been dubbed into English by the original Japanese cast; the fab set is by Takuya Kamiike, with moody lighting by Masayuki Abe, crackling sound by Koji Sato and Shintaro Mastunomiya, and videography and editing by Nobuhiro Matsuzawa. In 2014, NGP made its American debut at Japan Society with The Room Nobody Knows, which featured a spectacular two-level set that represented the unconscious and subconscious minds. With this VR iteration of The Dark Master, Tanino serves up a wonderful physical and psychological meal, one that can be enjoyed together by strangers, just like watching theater or eating in a restaurant, two of life’s necessities (and genuine pleasures) that were unavailable for so much of the last sixteen months.

ANDROMEDA’S SISTERS: AN ARTS & ADVOCACY GALA

Who: The Neo-Political Cowgirls
What: Fifth annual benefit gala
Where: NPC Cowgirls online and Leiber Collection Museum in East Hampton
When: Saturday, June 26, $25 streaming, $125-$250 in person, 5:00
Why: Last summer, the nonprofit organization the Neo-Political Cowgirls hosted the fourth annual “Andromeda’s Sisters” online, two virtual evenings of short performances, workshops, and discussion focused on advocacy, including, most memorably, Catherine Curtin in Joy Behar’s stirring monologue Where Are You At? and Laura Gómez in Dipti Bramhandkar’s Brown Girl’s Guide to Self-Pleasure. This year, “Andromeda’s Sisters: An Arts & Advocacy Gala,” which took place in person in 2019 at Guild Hall, goes hybrid, happening online as well as at the Leiber Collection Museum in East Hampton on June 26 at 5:00.

The 2021 event includes a reading of Kathryn Grant’s one-act play Order My Steps, about a prison inmate reconnecting with her estranged adult daughter, directed by Florencia Lozano and NPC founder Kate Mueth and starring Curtin and Irene Sofia Lucio, followed by a panel discussion on social justice and advocacy with Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson, New Hour for Women and Children — Long Island founder Serena Ligouri, and novelist and editor Angie Cruz. Founded in 2007, the Neo-Political Cowgirls “are committed to making work for women and about women — to creating a space where women and girls from all walks of life can share their experiences, joys, concerns, and spirits through professional dance.” The gala gets its name from the legend in which Princess Andromeda, captured by Poseidon, is saved by the daughters of the God of the Sea, leading to the idea that sisters should seek to help one another in these difficult times. Access to the livestream is $25; in-person tickets are $125-$250.