this week in theater

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Extended through May 9
Tickets: $32.50 for time-specific single stream, $47.50 for forty-eight-hour on-demand viewing with behind-the-scenes featurette
www.ootbtheatrics.com/l5y

“I think you’re really gonna like this show / I’m pretty sure it doesn’t suck / See, you’re laughing, and I’m smiling,” Cathy Hiatt (Nasia Thomas) sings early in Jason Michael Webb’s exhilarating, intimate, and emotional adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 two-character sung-through musical, The Last Five Years. Produced by Out of the Box Theatrics, Holmdel Theatre Company, and Blair Russell, this online version, streaming through May 9, was rehearsed remotely and filmed in a cramped New York City apartment, with director of photography and videographer Brian Bon using a handheld camera, lending an immediacy and urgency to the proceedings, as well as an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia as Jewish writer Jamie Wellerstein (Nicholas Edwards) and actress Cathy journey across the beginning, middle, and end of a relationship, told backward by Cathy but chronologically by Jamie. When career success seems imminent for one but not the other, jealousy and envy threaten their love, made all the more intense by the close quarters necessitated by Covid-19 restrictions.

As Cathy and Jamie make their way through the apartment, they encounter keyboardist and associate music director Cynthia Meng, cellist Sterling Elliott, violist Orlando Wells, guitarist Jonathan Linden, bassist Chelton Grey, and drummer Brandon Brooks sitting in corners, relaxing on the bed, or suddenly appearing in the living room or kitchen, performing poignant orchestrations of such songs as “Still Hurting,” “The Schmuel Song,” “The Next Ten Minutes,” and “A Miracle Would Happen / When You Come Home to Me.” Casting two people of color and not changing the script — the original production in Skokie starred Lauren Kennedy (replaced by Sherie Rene Scott) and Norbert Leo Butz — lead to scenes both moving and, at times, humorous, as when Jamie considers his potential romantic partners in “Shiksa Goddess,” explaining, “I’ve been waiting through Danica Schwartz and Erica Weiss / And the Handelman twins / I’ve been waiting through Heather Greenblatt, Annie Mincus, Karen Pincus, and Lisa Katz / And Stacy Rosen, Ellen Kaplan, Julie Silber, and Janie Stein / I’ve had Shabbos dinners on Friday nights / With every Shapiro in Washington Heights” as photos of the women are projected on the wall behind him. But at the heart of the story is a universality that transcends race, religion, or ethnicity as two people try to build a life together.

Cathy (Nasia Thomas) and Jamie (Nicholas Edwards) tell their story in opposite directions in The Last Five Years (photo © Gerald Malaval)

Thomas (Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and Edwards (Godspell, Frozen) are utterly engaging as Cathy and Jamie; you are instantly drawn into their orbit, rooting for them even when you know what’s going to happen from the very first song. Thomas is particularly captivating as Cathy digs deep into who she is and what she desires. Tony winner Webb (The Color Purple, Choir Boy) shoots some of the scenes without cuts as the camera winds through multiple rooms, making the most of the surroundings, which feature a fun production design by Adam Honoré that includes lots of books, theatrical posters, and Playbills; the costumes are by Siene Zoë Allen, with sound by Nicole Maupin and Carin M. Ford. Brown (13, The Bridges of Madison County) won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics back in 2002; two decades later, The Last Five Years is as fresh and alive as ever. It definitely doesn’t suck.

STUDIO THEATRE: UNTIL THE FLOOD

Until the Flood features three women playing multiple roles in dazzling production

Studio Theatre associate artistic director Reginald L. Douglas takes Dael Orlandersmith’s one-woman show, Until the Flood, to a whole new level in a stirring, deeply affecting online version, streaming through May 9. In January 2018, Pulitzer Prize finalist Orlandersmith presented Until the Flood at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. In the play, which was originally commissioned by the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Orlandersmith portrays eight composite characters in relating the tragic story of the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014; Orlandersmith traveled to Ferguson and interviewed dozens of people to understand the incident from every possible angle. (A recording of the Rattlestick show can be viewed for free here.)

Douglas has transformed the work by having a trio of stunning Black women of different ages, Felicia Curry, Ora Jones, and Billie Krishawn, perform the roles of Black retired schoolteacher Louisa Hemphill (70s), white retired policeman Rusty Harden (75), Black teen Hassan (17), white high school teacher Connie Hamm (35), Black barber Reuben Little (late 60s/early 70s), white landowner and electrician Dougray Smith (late 30s/early 40s), Black high school student Paul (17), and Black Unitarian minister Edna Lewis (late 50s/early 60s), who share their thoughts on racism, anger, violence, poverty, fear, bigotry, liberalism, homosexuality, protest, privilege, education, and other social issues. There is almost too much pain to bear, but keep watching.

“It wasn’t until I reached my mid- to late-30s and moved back to St. Louis, and when both parents died, I realized, saw; and I remember my father saying how racism causes self-hate,” Hemphill (Jones) recalls. “Legacy is the word that comes to mind. Legacy. The legacy of self-hate. The legacy of keeping your place. The legacy of grinning and bowing. The legacy of seeing yourself as a n****r, being taught to see yourself as a n****r. My God, how I hate that word. How I hate when anybody, white or Black, uses it. That young man, Michael Brown, his death, he was made to see himself that way — as a n****r. As someone who was nondeserving. He was set up, and he set himself up to fail.”

Filmed using several cameras that follow the characters on Studio Theatre’s DC stage and in the empty seats, moving from close-ups to longer shots that remind us of the loneliness and isolation of the pandemic lockdown, the eighty-minute production might be specifically about Brown and Ferguson, but now, in 2021, it also evokes George Floyd and Minneapolis, Adam Toledo and Chicago, Breonna Taylor and Louisville, Daunte Wright and Brooklyn Center, Rayshard Brooks and Atlanta, Elijah McClain and Aurora, Philando Castile and Falcon Heights, Alton Sterling and Baton Rouge, Sandra Bland and Hempstead, Freddie Gray and Baltimore, Tamir Rice and Cleveland, and so many other men, women, and children of color killed by police around the country since Brown’s murder.

Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood explores the Michael Brown shooting and more in blazing Studio Theatre adaptation

“There is a part of me that wants to go, get out. There’s a part that wants to stand before a gun, right in front of some redneck, hungry motherfucker who don’t know my name, who don’t care what my name is, but I know this motherfucker would aim to shoot and not miss,” Hassan (Krishawn), wearing a hoodie, shouts. “I’m seventeen, man. Sometimes I feel seven, sometimes I feel seventy, and I want out. Spill my blood, man, spill it. I just want out! Do it!”

Each scene seamlessly transitions to the next with the actresses, sometimes with script in hand, slightly overlapping in a kind of nonphysical handoff, acknowledging one another as one takes center stage and the other sits down, melding audience, performer, and character. (The expert lighting and sound are by Jesse Belsky and Elisheba Ittoop, respectively.) Douglas and video director Wes Culwell occasionally cut to the reactions of the other two while the third is delivering a monologue; in addition, the two seated actresses perform dialogue within the third’s speech when a character other than the one they are playing speaks.

Curry (Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Jones (Curve of Departure, The Children), and Krishawn (Blood at the Root, Ohio State Murders) are extraordinary, gaining power and passion as Orlandersmith, whose other works include Forever, Yellowman, Monster, and The Gimmick, digs deeper into the many aspects of racial injustice, as seen from multiple sides.

“I’m not gonna live in fear. I won’t give in to it,” Paul (Curry at her fiercest) declares before walking over to a concrete pillar, softly looking at it and touching it, then admitting, “I live in the Canfield apartments just like Michael Brown did. You know, if you look at a housing project or low-income apartments like Canfield, if you really look at it, it looks just like a prison. I mean, it really does look just like a prison. Sometimes it feels like that too. Feels just like a prison. There’s something that’s just, I don’t know, defeated there. It feels defeated.”

The finale is not about defeat, nearly exploding off the screen as Curry, Jones, and Krishawn unite, three generations coming together onstage while pointing to the future. Throughout the play, it becomes more and more apparent via costume changes that Krishawn is pregnant, and by the end, she is rubbing and holding her belly, hoping and praying, along with us, that her baby won’t become the next Michael Brown.

SITTING AND TALKING

Laguna Playhouse online
Streaming through May 2, $20
lagunaplayhouse.com

Earlier this week I was in California, and as we passed by the Laguna Playhouse, I couldn’t help but notice the “Closed” sign. When I returned home to New York City, I discovered, coincidentally enough, that there were still a few days left to catch the hundred-year-old company’s streaming of Lia Romeo’s Sitting and Talking. The fifty-five-minute online production, available on demand through May 2, was written specifically for and takes place over Zoom. Romeo penned the script last May, it was filmed in August, and it premiered in September as part of the Hoboken-based Mile Square Theatre’s “Given Circumstance: New Plays in the Virtual World” series (and coproduced by Project Y).

It’s April 2020, and two unnamed septuagenarians meet through an online matchmaking site. He (Dan Lauria) is a gruff divorcé, while she (Wendie Malick) is an elegant widow, not sure if she’s ready to date yet after her husband’s death two years before. Their first Zoom call is pretty much a disaster, as they have little in common and no electricity. But they keep speaking with each other, finding a certain solace in their sudden, if not magnetic, connection. She tells him, “They’re saying loneliness is an epidemic, especially among older . . . I mean, a lot of us were pretty isolated before, if we didn’t have regular things we did. And now I think we can’t even see our kids, our grandkids.” He admits, “I was stupid to think I could fix it. I can’t fix anything.” While he is open to developing their relationship, she is cautious and fearful, echoing how so many people have felt during the pandemic lockdown, when we spent most of our time in our houses and apartments, unable to see friends, relatives, or potential significant others.

Dan Lauria and Wendie Malick try Zoom dating during the pandemic in Sitting and Talking

Directed by James Glossman (Flint, Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy) and recorded in the actors’ homes (they supply their own wardrobe, set design, and camerawork), Sitting and Talking is a warmly told tale with an innate charm and sense of humor. Lauria (The Wonder Years, A Christmas Story: The Musical) and Malick (Hot in Cleveland, Just Shoot Me!) have an infectious camaraderie that immediately welcomes you into the story of their characters; the actors might just be sitting around talking, but you’re likely to be left with a bit of longing when it ends, perhaps unwilling to say goodbye to them just yet.

Regional theater champions Lauria and Malick know each other well, and that comes across onscreen; they previously teamed up for a reading of Lee Blessing’s A Body of Water at the 2018 Durango PlayFest, which they helped cofound, and were scheduled to appear in the world premiere of Blessing’s Tea with the Boss last July at New Jersey Repertory before the coronavirus crisis shuttered all live performance. They portray their characters with a tender vulnerability that we can all identify with, regardless of our age or family situation. Every one of us has experienced feelings of loss and isolation over the last fourteen months, moments of dread that we tend to keep inside and that Romeo (Connected, Green Whales) thoughtfully explores.

There have been only a handful of exceptional works written during the pandemic in which the narrative organically unfolds over Zoom. These include Jake Shore’s Adjust the Procedure, Jordan E. Cooper’s Mama’s Got a Cough, and Richard Nelson’s What Do We Need to Talk About? You can add the exquisitely rendered Sitting and Talking to that exclusive club.

(For more on the show and its potential longevity, you can watch a Zoom talkback with Lauria, Malick, Glossman, and Romeo, moderated by Laguna Playhouse artistic director Ann E. Wareham, here.)

LITTLE GEM: A PERFORMANCE ON SCREEN

Who: Marsha Mason, Brenda Meaney, Lauren O’Leary
What: Virtual play reading
Where: #IrishRepOnline
When: April 27 – May 9, free with RSVP (suggested donation $25)
Why: The Irish Rep continues its outstanding productions made during the pandemic lockdown with a virtual reading of Elaine Murphy’s Little Gem. The show is a reunion for the cast — Marsha Mason, Brenda Meaney, and Lauren O’Leary are back to re-create their roles from the in-person production that ran at the Irish Rep in in the fall of 2019. I wrote of that production, “Three generations of women in a North Dublin family share their foibles and exert their fortitude in successive monologues in Marc Atkinson Borrull’s engaging if not quite sparkling revival. First seen in the US at the Flea in 2010, the hundred-minute play begins with eighteen-year-old Amber (O’Leary), who enters a doctor’s office waiting room and talks about a night of partying at a high school ball with her best friend, Jo, involving drugs and alcohol, dancing, and her maybe-boyfriend, Paul. When she is done, her mother, Lorraine (Meaney), comes in and, while Amber watches her, discusses a strange occurrence at the store where she works that ends up with her having to speak with human resources. And then Kay (Mason), Amber’s grandmother and Lorraine’s mother, walks in and, while the other two look at her, describes her vaginal itch and her ill husband, Gem, who she loves but calls a ‘cantankerous oul’ fuck.’ She says, ‘I’m the wrong side of sixty, not dead. I haven’t had sex in well over a year and it’s killing me.’”

The reading is again directed by Borrull, with the actors filmed remotely at their homes in Connecticut, London, and New York. It works surprisingly well as the story, a series of monologues, unfolds in personal, private spaces that lend an intimacy that was just off in the stage play. When Lorraine explains about an HR person, “She reaches across the desk and touches my hand. Don’t remember the last time someone touched me, hugged me, or even bleedin’ nudged me,” it strikes deep, as we’ve all been quarantining, not interacting with other people for more than a year, watching works online in which actors are in separate Zoom boxes, unable to make physical contact. (Kay’s complaint about not having sex in a year also has additional impact because of the coronavirus crisis.) Little Gem is streaming on demand at specific times from April 27 to May 9; tickets are free, but a $25 donation is suggested if you can afford it. The Irish Rep, which has broken the mold of what is possible during the lockdown, has also brought back its ten previous virtual productions, including the must-see On Beckett with Bill Irwin, The Weir by Conor McPherson, and Brendan Conroy in The Aran Islands, each available on demand here.

EXQUISITE CORPSE COMPANY: ZOETROPE

Zoetrope’s Performance Space
134 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn
Thursday – Sunday, May 1-23, $35
www.exquisitecorpsecompany.com

Cofounded in 2012 by artistic director Tess Howsam, Brooklyn-based Exquisite Corpse Company produces site-specific works in unusual places; Odd.A.See was set in the basement of an abandoned hospital ward, The Chechens and Killjoy were staged in a Fifth Ave. loft, and A Ribbon About a Bomb, Secession 2015, The Enchanted Realm of Rene Magritte, and Water, Water, Everywhere . . . made their way through houses on Governors Island. With the coronavirus crisis preventing the troupe from finding another unique space, ECC presented Insulted. Belarus(sia) on Zoom last fall.

Now the company has brought together the outside and the inside with Zoetrope. The interactive, immersive thirty-five-minute show, written by ECC writers-in-residence Elinor T Vanderburg, Leah Barker, and Emily Krause and directed by Porcia Lewis and Howsam, unfolds in a cramped New York City apartment on a cargo trailer bed on Vanderbilt Ave. in Brooklyn. Five audience members at a time watch the action through socially distanced windows and listen on headphones as Angel and Bae (and their fish) deal with the pandemic, politics, racism, and their relationship; the cast features Jules Forsberg-Lary, Leana Gardella, Vanessa Lynah, and Starr Kirkland. A button next to each window allows viewers to impact the action in the room, which is decorated in black-and-white by designers Emily Addision and Dominica Montoya and is so tiny that the most important member of the team might be intimacy director Daniella Caggiano. Zoetrope runs Thursdays to Sundays, May 1-23; tickets are $35, but the code PREVIEW will save you ten bucks May 1-2.

ON THE ROOF: A LOOK INSIDE FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH BOOK PARTY

Joel Grey, Samantha Hahn, Stephanie Lynne Mason, Zalmen Mlotek, Rosie Jo Neddy, Bebe Neuwirth, Raquel Nobile, Jana Robbins, and Rachel Zatcoff will take part in Yiddish Fiddler book celebration

Who: Joel Grey, Samantha Hahn, Stephanie Lynne Mason, Zalmen Mlotek, Rosie Jo Neddy, Bebe Neuwirth, Raquel Nobile, Jana Robbins, Rachel Zatcoff
What: Virtual book launch party
Where: National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
When: Sunday, May 2, free, 2:15
Why: In the summer of 2018, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene unleashed a phenomenon on the New York City theater world, a mind-blowing production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. At the time, I wrote, “I’ve seen numerous Fiddlers over the years, but this Yiddish version, which could have felt dated and old-fashioned, instead is very much of the moment in the wake of the immigrant and refugee crisis currently going on in America and around the world. It’s chilling watching the final scenes in light of what is shown on the news night after night.” Samantha Hahn, who played Beylke, the youngest of Tevye and Golde’s five daughters, documented the making of the show, regularly talking to cast and crew, and now takes us behind the scenes — through auditions, rehearsals, mishaps, and more — in On The Roof: A Look Inside Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. She writes in the book, “I went home that night and took a shower, put on my pajamas, turned out the lights, and crawled into bed. A minute later I got out of bed, turned on the lights, took the pillow case off of my pillow to wrap around my head like a shmata, and practiced the ‘Tradition’ choreography. Even in my little bedroom, wearing my ‘Yertle the Turtle’ hand-me-down pajama shirt and my blue pillow case around my head — it felt like I was doing something special.”

On May 2 at 2:15, Hahn, an actress, singer, voiceover artist, and author, will do something special at a virtual book party, reuniting with her four stage sisters, Stephanie Lynn Mason (Hodl), Rosie Jo Neddy (Khave), Raquel Nobile (Shprintze), and Rachel Zatcoff (Tsaytl), as well as director Joel Grey, producer Jana Robbins, NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, and Fiddler fan Bebe Neuwirth, who was at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust for opening night. (The musical later moved uptown to Stage 42.) The party will include backstage video footage, a panel discussion, a live chat, and a Q&A. To get in the mood, you can check out Fiddler’s Stars in the House reunion here.

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN

Patrick Page explores the history of villainy in Shakespeare’s plays in captivating one-man show for STC

Shakespeare Theatre Company
Available on demand, $25
www.shakespearetheatre.org

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate William Shakespeare’s 457th birthday — and honor the 405th anniversary of his death — by watching Patrick Page’s extraordinary one-man show, All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, in which the award-winning actor makes the case that no one has ever created bad guys quite like the Bard.

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s streaming presentation begins with an introduction by Page from his home, explaining why he wrote a play about scoundrels and malefactors. “My aim in doing so is to show how Shakespeare’s two-decade exploration of evil actually made him a more humane and sophisticated writer. In creating an entirely new kind of villain, Shakespeare rejected the prejudices of his age and became a writer for all of us.”

In the eighty-minute show, filmed at STC’s Sidney Harman Hall without an audience, Page traces the history of villains in the Bard’s plays chronologically, from 1590 to 1611, adding in a nod to a theatrical experience from young Will’s childhood. “Do you believe in evil spirits? Do you believe in evil? Did Shakespeare?” Page asks. “It’s an important question because Shakespeare, for all intents and purposes, invented the characters we now call the villain. You’ve likely seen Shakespeare’s influence everywhere and not even recognized it.”

Page, who is one of theater’s greatest Shakespearean actors and teachers, portrays Richard III, Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV, Part 2 (referring to him as “a walking compendium of the Seven Deadly Sins”), Malvolio from Twelfth Night, Claudius from Hamlet, Prospero from The Tempest, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, and Iago from Othello, who he identifies as a sociopath. Talking about playing Iago in an STC production (opposite Avery Brooks), Page explains, “And so began a year of research and study that changed my view of my fellow human beings and opened my eyes to the reality of the evil hidden in plain sight all around us.” (Page has also played Macbeth, Claudius, Prospero, and Coriolanus at STC.)

Page compares the title character of Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta to Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus and does a deep dive into Shylock from The Merchant of Venice. “Shylock is the villain of the play,” he states. “But for the first time in history, he’s a villain whose motivation is so clear, whose psychology is so complex, and whose language is so rich and idiosyncratic that he changes the way we experience villainy itself.”

Directed by Alan Paul and shot by Ryan Risley, the play opens with Page walking onstage, looking out at an empty audience, an immediate reminder of the world’s current villain, the coronavirus, which has kept theaters closed for more than a year. Elizabeth A. Coco’s lighting is sharp and intense as Risley’s camera films Page from numerous angles, with appropriately ominous close-ups. Various props add further tension as well as comic relief; just wait until you see how Page portrays Falstaff. Gordon Nimmo-Smith’s sound design captures Page’s distinctive baritone as it resonates throughout the empty theater.

Patrick Page looks at the concept of evil in Shakespeare’s characters, including Richard III, in streaming presentation

Page knows what of he speaks; in addition to having portrayed his fair share of Shakespeare baddies, he has played Scar in The Lion King, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Hades in Hadestown, and the Grinch in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, villains all in one form or another. His command of Shakespeare and the concept of evil is bold and impressive, but he is down-to-earth enough to throw in plenty of surprising modern-day pop-culture references to keep it fresh and relevant to those who might not know much about the Bard or Elizabethan theater. It’s a bravura performance that provides a much-needed level of comfort as theaters remain closed, albeit with legitimate hopes that they will be reopening in the very near future. In the meantime, we have Page and All the Devils Are Here to keep us company and scare the wits out of us, as he does with the following frightening excerpt from Macbeth:

“Make thick my blood. / Stop up the access and passage to remorse, / Let no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose, nor keep a peace between / The effect and it! Come, thick night, / and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, / That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, / Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark / To cry ‘Hold, hold!’”