this week in theater

LITTLE ISLAND

Little Island is an urban oasis that juts out on Pier 55 in Hudson River Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LITTLE ISLAND
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
Open daily, 6:00 am – 1:00 am
Free timed tickets, noon – midnight
littleisland.org
little island slideshow

While billionaires Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk battle it out to see who can rocket to Mars first, New York socialite couple Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg have their feet firmly planted on the Earth. Ten years ago, the Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation contributed $20 million to the construction of the High Line, a converted elevated railway that has become one of the most glorious parks in the world. And in 2015, they cemented their local legacy by donating $113 million to Little Island, a lovely new paradise built on the remnants of a ramshackle pier at West Thirteenth St., in the shadow of the Whitney and just down the street from David Hammons’s Day’s End, a 325-foot-long brushed-steel outline of an abandoned warehouse on Pier 52 where Gordon-Matta Clark carved holes in the walls in 1975, a ghostly homage to what — and who — is no longer there. (The Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation was one of many donors who helped fund Hammons’s permanent installation.)

Concrete tulip pillars welcome visitors to Little Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Little Island is a warm and welcoming oasis rising more than 60 feet above the Hudson River, shaped like a large leaf, leading visitors from the land into water. It is bursting with more than 350 species of flowers, trees, and shrubs, a 687-seat amphitheater for live performances known as the Amph, the Play Ground plaza where you can get food and drink (sandwiches, salads, fried stuff, vegan options), and stage and lawn space called the Glade. More than 66,000 bulbs and 114 trees have been planted, taking into account the changing seasons and even the differences in light between morning, afternoon, and night. It all sits upon 132 concrete pillars of varying heights that resemble high heels or slightly warped tulip glasses.

Winding paths lead to fun surprises on Little Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are several sloping paths that take you through the greenery and up to lifted corners that offer spectacular views of Lower Manhattan and Jersey City across the river. Little Island was designed by Thomas Heatherwick of London-based Heatherwick Studio, with landscape design by Signe Nielsen of the New York City firm MNLA, offering unique surprises and sweet touches as you make your way across the stunning environment, including rusted cylindrical metal posts that evoke the pier’s eroding wooden piles, a small wooden stage, interactive dance chimes and an instrument sculpture (“Instrument for All”) by Alfons van Leggelo, and a pair of black-and-white optical spinners.

Little Island has unique architectural elements around every corner (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the middle of the Play Ground, an abstract-shaped floor plaque pronounces, “In this year of 2021 we dedicate Little Island to the people of New York and to visitors from around the world — for their everlasting enjoyment, for gamboling and cavorting, playing and ramping, repose and reflection — and with the hope that it fulfills that ambition with as much joy as it has brought to those that built it.”

The Amph will host free and ticketed live performances all summer long and into the fall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

That joy continues with free year-round multidisciplinary programming that kicks off this month with such series as “Free Music in the Amph,” “Sunset Sounds,” “Little Library,” “Live! at Lunch,” “Late Night in the Play Ground,” “Weekend Wind Down,” “Savory Talks,” “New Victory LabWorks,” and “Creative Break: Music,” “Creative Break: Visual Art,” and “Creative Break: Dance.” Admission is first-come, first-served; however, entry to Little Island, which is open daily from 6:00 am to 1:00 am, requires advance reservations between noon and midnight. There will also be paid ticketed performances such as “Broadway Our Way” and “An Evening with American Ballet Theatre,” both of which sold out quickly, and free shows that must be reserved in advance, such as “Tina and Friends: BYOB (Bring Your Own Beautiful),” a Pride Month celebration on June 26 at 8:00 with award-winning playwright and director Tina Landau. Landau, tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel, actor, singer, and music director Michael McElroy, and PigPen Theatre Co. are Little Island’s inaugural artists-in-residence; they will be curating and participating in numerous events in the next several months. Below is a list of upcoming ticketed shows.

Saturday, June 26, 8:00
Tina and Friends: BYOB (Bring Your Own Beautiful), with Tina Landau, the Amph, free tickets available June 16 at 2:00

Saturday, July 10, 2:00
Little Orchestra Society’s Things That Go Bang, the Amph, $25-$65

Saturday, July 24, and Sunday, July 25
Little Island Storytelling Festival, with Mahogany L Browne, Sarah Kay, Jon Sands, Shaina Taub, Broken Box Mine, Daniel Nayeri, Phil Kaye and the Westerlies, Michael Thurber, and others, the Amph, some shows require advance tickets available June 22

Friday, September 17, Saturday, September 18, and Sunday, September 19, 8:00
Little Island Dance Festival, with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Barkha Patel, Michela Marino Lerman, Tomoe Carr, Danni Gee, Andre Imanishi, and others, the Amph, tickets on sale June 22

MAGIS THEATRE COMPANY: THE ALCESTIAD AT FOUR FREEDOMS PARK

Who: Magis Theatre Company
What: Covid-delayed production of Thornton Wilder’s The Alcestiad
Where: Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park
When: June 18-20, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Thornton Wilder’s lesser-known The Alcestiad followed the most productive period of his career, arriving after 1938’s Pulitzer Prize winner Our Town and The Merchant of Yonkers, the 1942 Pulitzer winner The Skin of Our Teeth, and the 1954 Yonkers revision The Matchmaker, the inspiration for the 1964 musical Hello, Dolly! Wilder, who would have turned 125 next year, wrote about The Alcestiad, a tale of tyranny and plague from Greek mythology that involves Princess Alcestis and her husband, Admetus, King of Thessaly, along with Apollo and Hercules: “On one level, my play recounts the life of a woman – of many women – from bewildered bride to sorely tested wife to overburdened old age. On another level it is a wildly romantic story of gods and men, of death and hell and resurrection, of great loves and great trials, of usurpation and revenge. On another level, however, it is a comedy about a very serious matter. . . . Yet I am aware of other levels, and perhaps deeper ones that will only become apparent to me later.”

In 1938, Wilder started working on the play, which was inspired by Euripides’s 438 BCE Alcestis; it premiered at Assembly Hall at the Edinburgh Festival in 1955 as A Life in the Sun, with Irene Worth starring as Alcestis, directed by Tyrone Guthrie. The Brooklyn-based nonprofit Magis Theatre Company, which specializes in bringing back neglected texts, is presenting the rarely performed play during the summer solstice, June 18-20, at 7:00 outdoors in Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, in the shadow of the landmarked remains of the James Renwick Jr.—designed Smallpox Hospital, which treated about seven thousand men, women, and children a year suffering from the dread disease between 1865 and 1875, after which it became a nurses’ dormitory. The cast features Jeanne Castagnaro, Russ Cusick, Margi Sharp Douglas, George Drance, Jack Fadner, Kimbirdlee Fadner, Jacqueline Lucid, Tony Macht, Rachel Benbow Murdy, Gabriel Portuondo, Mae Roney, Diego Tapia, and Jenna Wyman, with music by Sara Gallassini and production design by GianMarco Lo Forte and Mark Tambella. “This has been a very long and trying year for all of us, and although we continued to meet online as a company, we are beyond thrilled to announce that we will be performing live this summer,” director George Drance said in a statement. “We chose The Alcestiad long before the pandemic, and the plague it deals with speaks to our present reality. Performing at Four Freedoms Park reminds us that there is still work to be done on ‘the freedom from fear.’ The ruins of the Smallpox Hospital remind us of how we have made it through all this before.”

In a January 1941 speech to Congress, FDR outlined the four freedoms: “The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.” Tickets for the three performances, which follow all Covid-19 regulations, are free but must be reserved in advance.

David Mendizábal: eat me!

Who: David Mendizábal
What: Livestreamed presentation
Where: Soho Rep. YouTube
When: Thursday, June 17, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: During the pandemic, Soho Rep. started Project Number One, in which eight artists were paid as salaried staff members, earning $1,250 per week plus health insurance to develop new work while shining a light on the problems creators faced as theaters closed and Covid-19 spread around the world. Becca Blackwell, Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Stacey Derosier, David Mendizábal, Ife Olujobi, David Ryan Smith, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jillian Walker met regularly to discuss what comes next for theater makers. In May, Smith released The Story of a Circle, a personal tale in which he pulls no punches from Walkerspace, and Tropicana is posting her podcast That’s Not What Happened here.

On June 17, director and designer Mendizábal will begin streaming his contribution, eat me! Describing the show, he writes, “They say that every seven years we essentially become new people, because in that time, every old cell in our body has been replaced by a new cell through a process known as autophagy. Autophagy literally translates to ‘self-eating,’ which got me thinking: What are the parts of myself, or ideas I’ve held on to / that I would eat away if I could? / What would I replace those ideas with?” The film is inspired by an Ecuadorian ritual in which people share “guaguas de pan,” or bread babies, with their lost loved ones on November 2, Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Deceased). Mendizábal (On the Grounds of Belonging, Tell Hector I Miss Him) sees his film, which is edited by Yee Eun Nam, with music and sound by Mauricio Escamilla and animation by Jeromy Velasco, as “a release and a rebirth” as we return to life together.

BLOOMSDAY ON BROADWAY AT 40

Who: Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, Colm Tóibín, Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, Scott Shepherd
What: Fortieth anniversary celebration of “Bloomsday on Broadway”
Where: Symphony Space online
When: Wednesday, June 16, $15, 7:00
Why: Symphony Space’s fortieth annual salute to James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Bloomsday on Broadway,” will take place virtually on the 117th anniversary of the day the novel is set, June 16, 1904. The online presentation begins with a discussion and audience Q&A between Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, and Colm Tóibín about the legacy of the work, followed by performances by Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, and Scott Shepherd from experimental immersive theater experts Elevator Repair Service (Gatz, Measure for Measure). As a bonus, there will be a link to clips from last year’s virtual show, which featured a vast array of celebrities reading sections of the tome. Produced in cooperation with Irish Arts Center, the event is directed by John Collins and dedicated to Symphony Space cofounder Isaiah Sheffer, who passed away in 2012 at the age of seventy-six. Last week I bumped into Shepherd on the street and he was excited about what they were planning for this edition of “Bloomsday on Broadway,” which only got me more pumped. You should be too. Tickets are $15, and the recording will be available through June 30.

RED BULL THEATER: VOLPONE, or THE FOX

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, June 14, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through June 18 at 7:00)
Why: In December 2012, Red Bull Theater presented a stellar version of Ben Jonson’s classic 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone, or The Fox, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which I called “a deliriously entertaining streamlined version . . . a frenetic farce fraught with fanciful flourishes.” Red Bull is bringing the play back for a live benefit reading on June 14 at 7:30, starring Grammy, Emmy, and Tony winner André De Shields as the title character and Hamish Linklater as Mosca, with Peter Francis James, Roberta Maxwell, Kristine Nielsen, Mary Testa, Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, and Sam Morales. The reading, which will be available on demand through June 18 at 7:00, is directed by Jesse Berger, who explains, “Human greed and con artists appear to be timeless parts of human nature – damnable in life, but hilarious onstage! We had so much fun with this delicious satire in our 2012 production, and I am excited to share the material again in this new way with a wholly new stellar cast of great comic actors. Plus there’ll be fun new nips, tucks, and comic wrinkles by the brilliant Jeffrey Hatcher and some design surprises and delights from our terrific creative team. Oh – this and all of Red Bull’s online events are performed live. Nothing is prerecorded – And just like with live theater: Anything can happen. With this hilarious cast, I think that’s truer than ever.” The visual design is by John Arnone, with costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz (based on original designs by Clint Ramos), original music and sound by Scott Killian, and props by Faye Armon-Troncoso.

On June 17 at 7:30, Berger, members of the company, and scholar Jean E. Howard will participate in a live Bull Session discussion. “The play opens with the main character, Volpone, making a rapturous speech to his gold. Nearly every other character is also in thrall to this ‘dumb god,’ and to attain more and more wealth these Venetians are ready to prostitute their wives, disinherit their sons and defile their honor. The action of Volpone exposes and satirizes the actions of its avaricious characters, but it does so with dazzling ingenuity. The play is dominated by a magnificent con artist, Volpone, and his tricky servant Mosca. Together they dupe the well-off doctors, lawyers, and merchants of Venice into giving rich gifts to Volpone, who pretends to be near death, in the hope that one of them can become his heir,” Howard notes. “Volpone, more perhaps than any other Jonsonian comedy, takes risks in its concluding scenes, stretching comedy to its limit as the tricksters dangerously overreach themselves and slam up against the harsh strictures of Venetian law.”

BLOOMSDAY REVEL 2021

Who: Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, Sarah Street, Alan Gogarty
What: In-person and livestreamed Bloomsday celebration
Where: Blooms Tavern, 208 East 58th St., and online
When: Sunday, June 13, $45, 3:00
Why: For nearly one hundred years, people have been celebrating Bloomsday, when James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, June 16, 1904. Yes, the seven-hundred-plus-page novel about Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus is set during one day in Dublin. On Sunday, June 13, at 3:00, Origin Theatre Company is presenting its eighth annual “Bloomsday Revel,” happening both live at Blooms Tavern on East Fifty-Eighth St. as well as online. The socially distanced afternoon features dramatic readings by such New York-based Irish actors as Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, and Sarah Street, musical interludes from Alan Gogarty, and a juried costume contest. Tickets for the in-person show, cocurated by Paula Nance and Michael Mellamphy, are $45 and include Bloomsday-inspired hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. “Luckily we didn’t miss a year in 2020,” new Origin artistic director Mellamphy said in a statement. “We were fully virtual last year, in a program packed with great performances and heartfelt messages. But this year we are creating an all-new hybrid that celebrates the many ways we share experiences like this unique and important literary holiday. James Joyce after all was all about setting new rules in art. . . . We’re immensely pleased to continue that tradition in 2021.”

WORLDS FAIR INN

Worlds Fair Inn explores nuclear annihilation and serial killing with a vaudeville sensibility (photo by Regina Betancourt)

WORLDS FAIR INN
Axis Theatre
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday through June 19, $20, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

On March 11, 2020, I was in Axis Theatre Company’s small, intimate downstairs space at One Sheridan Square, getting ready to watch artistic director Randy Sharp’s adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square. Shortly before the show started, a few of us chuckled as a woman roamed the aisles, unable to choose a seat. (The venue is general admission.) When she was right behind me, I heard her mutter, “I’m not going to get sick. This virus is not going to get me.” A few of us looked at one another, thinking she had gone a bit overboard. Little did I know that Washington Square would be the last live theater with actors and an in-person audience I would experience for nearly fifteen months because of a virus that has killed more than six hundred thousand Americans and shuttered live entertainment venues around the globe.

On June 4, 2021, there I was, back at the Axis Theatre, to see my first indoor play with actors and an audience since the pandemic lockdown was lifted. It was the premiere of Sharp’s Worlds Fair Inn, performed by a cast of five to an audience of fifteen people in masks. Not only was it thrilling to be in the theater, but the hourlong work is a fab absurdist journey through madness and tragedy, a strange and enticing mix of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the Three Stooges.

Axis producing director Brian Barnhart stars as Frank, a creepy character right out of a low-budget Roger Corman horror-comedy, a composite of Victor Frankenstein, the fictional mad scientist who built a creature out of dead bodies; theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”; and H. H. Holmes, a con artist and serial killer who owned the World’s Fair Hotel, aka the Murder Castle, near the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Two loony bowler-hatted fellows, Eric (George Demas) and Bill (Jon McCormick), arrive at the inn, seeking shelter and company. All three men wear dark clothing and giant Frankenstein-style shoes on a set littered with dozens of bottles of whiskey, a hotel front desk that doubles as a killing casket, and a neon sign advertising the name of the place. The set is designed by Sharp, with period costumes by Karl Ruckdeschel, fun props by Lynn Mancinelli, eerie lighting by David Zeffren, and playfully sinister sound and music by former Blondie member Paul Carbonara.

“What do you think it would take to make a living man out of a bunch of cut-up dead people? I mean if you cut them up and glued them together?” Frank, who boasts that he’s a scientist, a doctor, an American, and an architect, asks.

“Why wouldn’t you use whole dead people and bring them back to life?” Eric answers, pauses, then adds, “Oh! Maybe you need separate parts so you can see how to make them work? Then stick them back?”

“Right,” Frank responds. “Or maybe I would just use the whole person. I’m an architect. It’s scientific. I just want to see what happens.”

Eric and Bill jump at the chance to help Frank in his unnatural mission, displaying no hesitancy at the prospect of killing people, chopping them up, then assembling the pieces into a new whole. “We’re builders,” Bill offers. “Not scientists. Just to be sure. We can fix things! Hard workers! . . . We’re contractors!”

Frank’s first two victims are Machine (Edgar Oliver), an erudite oddball, and Lady (Britt Genelin), a coquettish factory worker; both fall for the men’s ruse, undone by their own pride in their willingness to embrace new ways.

Lady (Britt Genelin) brings light to the dark proceedings of Worlds Fair Inn (photo by Regina Betancourt)

Worlds Fair Inn feels like a uniquely charming, deranged vaudeville act with Moe/Shemp (Frank), Larry (Bill), and Curly (Eric) filtered through Corman’s Tales of Terror. The cast is wonderfully over the top, highlighted by the risible interplay between Demas (Maverick, Last Man Club) and McCormick (Dead End, Donkey Punch). Pay particular attention to McCormick even when he’s not talking; he moves in herky-jerky fits and starts, overcome by nerves and fear, often leaving his thoughts unfinished as his eyes dart about the stage.

Barnhart (High Noon, Dead End) channels Angus Scrimm from Phantasm and John Carradine in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) as he delivers his lines with great bombast. It’s fab to see Oliver, a solo specialist who has presented In the Park, East 10th St.: Self Portrait with Empty House, and Attorney Street at Axis, as part of an ensemble; he and Genelin (Washington Square, High Noon) are adorable as vaudeville versions of the Creature and the Bride of Frankenstein, trapped in a skit they don’t fully comprehend.

Writer-director Sharp (Strangers in the World, Seven in One Blow) adeptly maneuvers between high and low comedy as she takes on nuclear annihilation, a different kind of rather effective serial killing — Frank, Eric, and Bill bow every time Japan is mentioned — and melds Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos, and Holmes’s murder hotel into a supremely funny and memorable show. As we finally emerge from this dark year, we may not have much hope for the future of humanity, but Axis gives us hope for the future of theater. (And I hope the woman I foolishly chuckled at in March 2020, before Washington Square at the Axis, is alive and well and gets to catch this terrific satire, as you should too.)