Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Tavi Gevinson) and Sara Jane Moore (Judy Kuhn) share their distaste for President Ford and KFC in Assassins (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
ASSASSINS
Classic Stage Company
Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 30 [Ed. note: All performances have been canceled as of January 25] www.classicstage.org
The late Stephen Sondheim, who passed away in November at the age of ninety-one, is currently represented in New York City by two musicals, Marianne Elliott’s stirring, gender-switching Broadway revival of the beloved Company at the Jacobs and John Doyle’s far less exciting adaptation of the much less worshiped Assassins at Classic Stage.
Kicking off his final year as artistic director at Classic Stage, Doyle, who began there in 2016, won a Tony for directing Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in 2005; he also staged a Tony-winning revival of Company in 2006 and helmed Merrily We Roll Along at Watermill in 2008. Despite his familiarity with Sondheim, his Assassins, which sold out almost instantly and has been extended through January 30, misses its mark. [Ed. note: All performances have been canceled because of a Covid outbreak in the company on January 25.]
The show was initially scheduled to open in March 2020, so anticipation only built higher during the pandemic lockdown before it eventually began its run in November 2021. Although no tickets are available, you might be able to grab a cancellation because of the omicron variant; the night I went, there were more than twenty vacant seats, a sign of the times.
Assassins brings together nine men and women who have tried to kill the president of the United States (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
The musical, featuring a book by librettist and TV writer John Weidman, who also collaborated with Sondheim on Pacific Overtures and Road Show, gives nine men and women the opportunity to defend their attempts to assassinate the president of the United States. The carnival atmosphere is facilitated by the Proprietor (Eddie Cooper), on a stage jutting out with the audience on three sides. In addition to directing, Doyle designed the set, which boasts the American flag spread across the floor under a large monitor on which photos of the presidents are posted like targets.
“Hey, pal — feelin’ blue? / Don’t know what to do? / Hey, pal — / I mean you — / Yeah. C’mere and kill a president,” the Proprietor sings in “Everybody’s Got the Right,” continuing, “No job? Cupboard bare? / One room, no one there? / Hey, pal, don’t despair — / You wanna shoot a president? / C’mon and shoot a president . . . Some guys / think they can’t be winners. / First prize / often goes to rank beginners.”
A terrific cast can’t breathe enough life into the choppy narrative, which goes back and forth among the assassins, who are joined by an ensemble of backup singers and musicians. Ethan Slater stands out as the Balladeer, a kind of traveling troubadour, and is almost unrecognizable as Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed JFK. Judy Kuhn adds comic relief as Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at Gerald Ford in September 1975, a few weeks after Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Tavi Gevinson) botched her attempt at the Nixon pardoner. Steven Pasquale tries to steal the show as Lincoln killer John Wilkes Booth but is overly dominant while Adam Chanler-Berat is barely there as Ronald Reagan shooter John Hinckley Jr.
Steven Pasquale plays John Wilkes Booth in Sondheim-Weidman revival at Classic Stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
Will Swenson is well-educated James A. Garfield murderer Charles Guiteau; Wesley Taylor is naturalized citizen Giuseppe Zangara, who fired at FDR but killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead; Andy Grotelueschen (now replaced by Danny Wolohan) is Samuel Byck, who tried to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon; and Brandon Uranowitz is anarchist Leon Czolgosz, who shot and killed William McKinley in 1901. The show perhaps works best as an argument for stronger gun control laws.
The assassins are all in period costumes except for Byck, who wears a Santa suit; the ensemble of singers and musicians (Brad Giovanine, Bianca Horn, Whit K. Lee, Rob Morrison, and Katrina Yaukey) wear red, white, or blue jumpsuits. (The effective costumes are by Ann Hould-Ward, with wigs by Charles G. LaPointe.) Some of the cast also have American flag masks that they whisk off when they sing.
Presidential assassins make their case in off-Broadway musical (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
The musical numbers, which range from “Gun Song” and “Unworthy of Your Love” to “Another National Anthem” and “Something Just Broke” and have unconventional orchestrations, don’t stick with you; they simply come and go. The idea itself is a grand one; watching these assassins mix and mingle is at times fascinating, but there is little flow to the book, which too often wilts or becomes confusing as it tries to neither celebrate nor revile the characters, who chose a dangerous path to change the country and their own place in it.
“So many people confuse the right to happiness with the right to the pursuit of happiness,” Sondheim said in Classic Stage’s 2021 “Tell the Story” virtual gala, in which he and Weidman relate the show to the January 6 insurrection, during which the lives of the vice president and the Speaker of the House were under threat. Even given the newfound relevance, though, the show feels dated.
To find out more about Assassins, you can check out Classic Stage’s ongoing Classic Conversations series, which during the lockdown featured members of the cast and crew discussing the revival.
Cecily Strong makes her New York stage debut in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)
THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Griffin Theater at the Shed, the Bloomberg Building
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 6, $49-129
646-455-3494 theshed.org
Covid-19 has changed the way we experience live theater. Simply lining up to get in, theatergoers run into different rules at different venues, some more invasive and slow going than others.
So when I whisked right into the Shed’s Griffin Theater to see Cecily Strong in a revival of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, I was initially disappointed to see so many empty seats fairly close to curtain time. I couldn’t help but wonder if people were staying away because of the omicron variant, because they were waiting for the reviews to come out, because Strong was not a big enough theatrical name (which I doubted), or because there had been some kind of bad word of mouth that hadn’t made it my way.
Fortunately, I was wrong in all cases, as the crowd streamed in to nearly fill the place. The opening lines of the play recognize the integral relationship between performer and audience as Strong, as the unnamed star of the show, says, “Thank you all for coming tonight. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you here. There’s always the chance that you might not show up. I think most actors worry about playing to an empty house. I also worry about playing to a full house and leaving the audience empty.”
The audience is not left empty in the ninety-minute one-woman show, written by Jane Wagner specifically for her partner, Lily Tomlin. It was first seen on Broadway in 1985 at the Plymouth, earning Tomlin a Tony; it was turned into a film in 1991 and revived at the Booth in 2000. All along, Wagner has been tweaking the script; the 2022 edition features new quips about the climate crisis, cybersex, Elon Musk, and GPS, but its focus on fear, false hopes, and interconnectedness as humanity tries to find meaning in its everyday existence is still front and center.
Strong portrays eleven characters, going through small wardrobe changes — Anita Yavich’s costumes include a rainbow umbrella hat, an overcoat laden inside with post-it notes, and various other minor touches — as she moves back and forth on a ratty stage occupied by a cart of neverending acquired objects. (The set is by Christine Jones and Mary Hamrick, with lighting by Stacey Derosier, sound and music by Elisheba Ittoop, and choreography by James Alsop.)
Cecily Strong embodies eleven characters in one-woman show (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)
Our guide is Trudy, a homeless woman, now squatting in the theater — Strong wears a black Shed T-shirt under all her outfits — who formerly was a successful corporate designer and creative consultant but now wanders the streets of New York City conversing with alien creatures, helping them collect data.
“Those shock treatments seemed to give me new electrical circuitry,” Trudy explains. “I get like these time-space continuum shifts. My brain is so far beyond, it’s staggering. Suddenly it was like my central nervous system had a patio addition out back. Not only do I have a linkup to extraterrestrial channels, I also got a hookup to humanity as a whole.” These shifts, in which Strong becomes other characters, are accompanied by a flash of light and crash of sound.
Agnus Angst is a fourteen-year-old punk performance artist and “new bio-form” with a negative attitude whose parents have locked her out of the house. (“We are all micro-SPECKS on SPECK-ship Earth.”) Chrissy is a seminar hopper looking for a job and self-awareness while thinking about suicide. (“Whooo! I got fired from that telemarketing place. No, they gave me no notice at all . . . just . . . warnings.”)
Kate is a gossipy, bored woman who has uneven hair and has lost the tip of a finger in a cooking class accident. (“I am sick of being the victim of trends I reflect but don’t even understand.”) Paul is a divorced father and sperm donor who is feeling burned out. (“What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?”)
Brandy and Tina are street prostitutes who get picked up by a writer who wants to talk to them for research. (“You’re the second guy this month wants to take out trade in this fashion. Last one ended up wanting my life history and a blowjob,” Brandy says. Tina adds: “I got news, what’s between her legs is her life history.”)
Lyn, Marge, and Edie are suburban friends evaluating their status, particularly as women. (Lyn: “I worry sometimes, maybe Bob has gotten too much in touch with his feminine side. Last night, I’m pretty sure he faked an orgasm.” Edie: “I look at myself . . . I don’t see any flaws.” Marge: “I’ve discovered a great medical cure for sobriety — alcoholism!”)
The homeless, endearing Trudy leads the search for signs of intelligent life with the help of unseen aliens (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)
In her New York theatrical debut, Strong, the ten-year SNL vet who also starred in the Apple TV musical parody series Schmigadoon!, eases right into the role made famous by Tomlin. Having seen the original Broadway production, I at first couldn’t stop thinking about whether two-time Emmy nominee Strong, whose August 2021 memoir, This Will All Be Over Soon, dealt with personal loss and the pandemic, was living up to Tomlin’s legend, but it wasn’t long before I was sucked into the characters, forgetting about both Strong and Tomlin. Strong makes the role her own, which is the strongest kind of praise one could give; she’s immensely likable, warm and friendly, and, very, very funny.
It was director Leigh Silverman’s idea to revive the work at the Shed as the lockdown was lifted, and she chose Strong after watching her portray Fox News host Jeanine Pirro jumping into a glass box of wine on Weekend Update last May. Silverman has helmed such Broadway plays as Grand Horizons and The Lifespan of a Fact in addition to the off-Broadway solo shows Harry Clarke and On the Exhale, and that experience keeps Signs energetic and exciting.
Whenever suicide was mentioned, I found it hard not to think about the Vessel, the twisting structure outside the Shed from which four people have jumped to their death since February 2020. Harsh reality is always right around the corner. Some of the New Agey feminist banter feels a bit dusty, but it always picks itself up in the hands of Strong, an improv specialist who just might be having even more fun than we are. What might feel like randomness at times all comes together by the end in surprising ways, emphasizing the interdependence of humanity. Wagner (Appearing Nitely,J.T.) and Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner Tomlin (Nashville,Grace and Frankie) have given their blessing to this revival — they are serving as executive producers — and their faith has been rewarded, as has ours. As Trudy tells us, giving each of our lives meaning, “The good news is: In the future, they are still making plans for the future.”
Works by Vivian J. O. Barnes, Danny Tejera, and Susan Xu are part of Second Stage’s Judith Champion New Voices Reading Series
Who:Second Stage Theater What:Staged readings of new plays Where: Tony Kiser Theater, 305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves. When: January 18, 24, 31, free with RSVP, 6:30 Why: Second Stage Theater’s 2022 Judith Champion New Voices Reading Series is set to take place January 18, 24, and 31, featuring professionally produced staged readings of three works by emerging artists. “We’re thrilled to be presenting the second year of our New Voices series — and to do so in person at the Tony Kiser Theater,” Second Stage president and artistic director Carole Rothman said in a statement. “Supporting early career writers is central to Second Stage’s mission, and I can’t wait for the Second Stage audience to be the first to experience these great plays by Danny, Vivian and Susan.”
First up is Danny Tejera’s Toros on January 18, about three twentysomethings and a dog hanging out in a garage in Madrid, directed by David Mendizábal, followed on January 24 by Vivian J. O. Barnes’s The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes, about a dance team preparing for homecoming, directed by Cristina Angeles, and concluding on January 31 with Susan Xu’s Yellow Dream$, a dark comedy about diversity, directed by May Adrales. “Support what is most important to you,” series underwriter Judith Champion added in a statement, “and one thing that is important to me is to nurture new playwriting talent so that theater flourishes for future generations.”
spit&vigor’s Ectoplasm opens January 13 at the Players Theatre (photo by Nick Thomas)
ECTOPLASM The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal St. between West Third & Bleecker Sts.
Wednesday – Sunday, January 13 – February 6, $52-$99 www.spitnvigor.com
Sara Fellini is proud of being old school, but that doesn’t mean she’s old-fashioned. The actress, playwright, director, and amateur historian started the New York City–based spit&vigor theater company in 2015 with executive producer Adam Belvo, “dedicated to makeshift, skin-of-your-teeth, ad hoc theater — bringing modern voices and perspectives to the wild, chaotic, irreverent, burlesque roots of theater.”
The company has performed such works as Casey Wimpee’s The Brutes, about the three Booth brothers staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, at the Players Club, which was founded by Edwin Booth; Fellini’s NEC SPE / NEC METU, in which Fellini portrayed seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi and Belvo played Caravaggio, at the Center at West Park; Fellini’s The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, a period piece about the death of a real-life Dublin madam in 1762 and the riot that followed; and Thomas Kee’s Mary’s Little Monster, about Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley. During the pandemic, they created the site-specific Luna Eclipse, which was livestreamed using one camera from the Center at West Park.
Next up for spit&vigor is Ectoplasm, running January 13 through February 6 at the Players. (The opening was delayed more than a week because of Covid.) Written and directed by Fellini, the phantasmagoric show is set in 1912 around a séance involving a famous magician, a spiritual medium, a madame, and an uninvited guest. The title refers to the eerie white substance, supposedly spiritual energy, that would emerge from the mouths of psychics as they contacted the deceased.
Below Fellini discusses her fascination with history, creating theater during the coronavirus crisis, taking risks, and more.
twi-ny: What was your initial reaction to the March 2020 pandemic lockdown?
sara fellini: Initially, I just absolutely could not fathom it. I just didn’t believe we’d go into lockdown. My reference point at that time was SARS, so I thought the panic would die down and we would continue on as we were. spit&vigor had two productions coming up at that time — as a small company, we can’t always control where or when we produce because we have to go where residencies are offered, so through no lack of desire on our part we hadn’t actually produced anything for a while and we had spent the better part of the year prepping for the productions at the New Ohio, and then our off-Broadway debut in March and May of 2020, respectively.
I could not imagine a world in which shows would be canceled. Before Covid, I’d never even heard of a rehearsal being canceled, and now two shows of ours were dropped in a matter of months. My entire worldview was changed.
twi-ny: The company is very much about site-specific, immersive productions. What were you working on at the time that couldn’t proceed?
sf: At the New Ohio, we were working on an “embedded” version of The Wake of Dorcas Kelly. We use the term embedded to mean that the audience is kind of sitting inside the brothel, like flies on the wall, watching the production. The actors don’t see or interact with the audience, but they’re very up-close and personal. So we were going to re-create the brothel inside of the New Ohio.
Then, at the Players Theatre, which is a proscenium, we were expanding our vision to create a diorama-esque version of another “embedded” play we’ve produced several times in the past, Mary’s Little Monster by Thomas Kee. We’ve produced that play before at the Mudlark Public Theatre, a one-room puppet theater in New Orleans owned by the genius Pandora Gastelum, and at Torn Page, the historic home of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.
The Players is a great space to do very intimate-feeling shows even though it’s a larger theater, because it’s very long, and you kind of get sucked into the stage. The stage becomes your entire vision when you sit facing forward. So we were planning on doing a very intimate production of a very intimate and sultry play, with a lot of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll . . . which now with Covid restrictions is an absolute NO for a while. Even if we staged it quite safely, I don’t think audiences are ready to see that kind of closeness onstage for a while.
twi-ny: Was Luna Eclipse already in process as an in-person show?
sf: No, I wrote Luna Eclipse as a response to the pandemic. I’ve always wanted to write a walk-through play (in person), and the pandemic gave me an opportunity to stretch that muscle. Luna Eclipse was a series of monologues exploring inherited mental illness (and the different historic perceptions of mental illness — are you a mystic visionary, or a failure to society?) through one family’s history, going all the way back to Roman times.
So I wrote the monologues, and we staged it at the Center at West Park as part of their incredible residency program. We did a lot of work to film the production, and livestream it, as a walk-through experience — like you were walking through the tunnel of time and encountering the different experiences of all of these ghosts. We essentially created a one-shot film in the vein of Russian Ark and 1917, except we did it live, as theater artists are wont to do.
Ectoplasm centers around a séance involving a famous magician (photo by Claire Daly)
twi-ny: Did you watch a lot of online theater during the lockdown?
sf: Um, no. I didn’t watch a lot of online theater. I hate to admit that, but I really dislike online theater. It’s so safe. And it completely misses the mark of what theater is supposed to be. I understand the impulse people have to stay safe physically, but online theater seems safe emotionally and I can’t really abide that. But you’re also talking to a person who doesn’t really like movies, either, so I’m already biased. We did Luna Eclipse, and we also did some live Zoom readings of classic TV shows for fun, but I am glad to be back in a theater and I wouldn’t ever really do online theater again in a serious way.
twi-ny: There have been a slew of recent works about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Frankenstein, including s&v’s Mary’s Little Monster. What do you think it is about her that has stimulated such interest in the past few years?
sf: In my historical research, I’ve noticed there are cycles of time where people suddenly become interested in women creators. The story of a young woman in competition with titans of literature Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley is irresistible, especially when you factor in their libertine sexual practices.
I think Mary Shelley herself interests people today for a few reasons: because she was the daughter of the legendary feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which shows a writing dynasty we rarely see through the mother’s line. She seems to have been sexually liberated in a way that we think we understand today, and she seems uniquely forgotten because her (male) creation is so ubiquitous while her name is not as well known. I think that’s a little bit of a false impression because fewer people could tell you that John Polidori rewrote the vampyre legend for popular Western culture, and, off the top of my head, I have no idea who created the mummy legend.
[Ed. note: Jane Louden’s novel The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century was published in 1827, while Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, about an archaeologist trying to revive a mummy, came out in 1903, six years after Dracula.]
Writer-director Sara Fellini used models during rehearsals for Ectoplasm (photo courtesy spit&vigor theatre company)
twi-ny: You returned to in-person shows first with Dorcas Kelly, then Hit Your Mark / Die Beautiful. What was that transition like?
sf: It was incredible to be back in a theater, with people. I wouldn’t ever go back. The first few rehearsals were very emotional.
twi-ny: How has the omicron variant, which is spreading throughout New York City (I now have it too), impacted the rehearsal process for Ectoplasm?
sf: I’m so sorry to hear that, I hope you recover quickly!
We have had to be extremely creative with rehearsals. Around the holidays, we moved rehearsals to Zoom to restrict exposure, which was torture. I created a replica set out of cardboard and used little rubber penguins as actors to go over staging, which was a nightmare. But I’m glad we did it because two of our cast members actually contracted omicron and had to continue to Zoom into rehearsals as they quarantined, even while the rest of us met in person.
Beyond that, we are testing frequently, hiring swings, which we’ve never really done before, and just doing our best and working hard, both to create a beautiful production and to keep everyone safe.
twi-ny: You also have a bent for historical re-creations, with plays involving such real-life figures as Shelley, the Booth family, Caravaggio and Gentileschi, Kelly, and now Houdini. Were you always into history?
sf: Yes, I’ve always been into history. I have trouble relating to the modern world. Ever since we started spending most of our time online, people have become irritable and impatient, turning the slightest friction or conflict into all-out war, zero to sixty, and it is so frustrating to me.
So, while a lot of the ideas and prejudices of the past are nonsense and based in ignorance and inexperience, I do think there’s a lot to be learned from people who spent all of their time noticing, negotiating, and navigating other human beings. We need that human interaction as much as we need food or water — and it’s becoming harder and harder to find it, because even when you’re in the same room as someone, after the Covid pandemic (and the pandemic of computers), people turn their faces away or fidget and squirm when they’re in the presence of other humans, myself included.
I want to rediscover our shared humanity, and I think one way to do so is turning back the clocks and finding the root source. If we combine the social aspect of the past with modern perspectives on gender, race, sexual orientation, we could have an incredibly rad world to live in.
Sara Fellini checks out part of the set for new work at Players Theatre (photo courtesy spit&vigor theatre company)
twi-ny: What other historical figures might play a part in future s&v productions?
sf: I’m developing a play at the moment about the women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, which is turning into a real romp.
twi-ny: You are a writer, director, costume designer, and actor. How do you juggle the four disciplines? When you are writing something, do you know immediately whether you will direct and/or star in it?
sf: I write plays for our company, so I generally have a good idea of who I want to be in it, what I want them to be wearing (from our costume stock), and how I would like the play to look. I think more writers should write like this, in a practical way — it’s very Shakespearean, or old Victorian theater.
A lot of theater productions seem a lot like film sets, with bloated production personnel and everybody in niche roles. We prefer to have an intimate team working together to create something personal. It’s riskier, because it means you take on a lot of the responsibility when something goes wrong and you can’t hide in your niche, but I think art is supposed to be risky, and I hope we don’t lose that mentality after all this time.
Who: Works by and/or featuring Moko Fukuyama, Joshua William Gelb, Gabrielle Hamilton, Jace, Elmore James, Jamal Josef, Katie Rose McLaughlin, Sara Mearns, Zaire Michel, Zalman Mlotek, Alicia Hall Moran, Patrick Page, Barbara Pollack, Seth David Radwell, Jamar Roberts, Tracy Sallows, Xavier F. Salomon, Janae Snyder-Stewart, Mfoniso Udofia, Anne Verhallen What:This Week in New York twentieth anniversary celebration Where:This Week in New York YouTube When: Original air date: Saturday, May 22, free with RSVP, 7:00 (now available on demand) Why: In April 2001, I found myself suddenly jobless when a relatively new Silicon Alley company that had made big promises took an unexpected hit. I took my meager two weeks’ severance pay and spent fourteen days wandering through New York City, going to museums, film festivals, parks, and tourist attractions. I compiled my experiences into an email I sent to about fifty friends, rating each of the things I had done. My sister’s husband enthusiastically demanded that I keep doing this, and This Week in New York was born.
Affectionately known as twi-ny (twhy-nee), it became a website in 2005 and soon was being read by tens of thousands of people around the globe. I covered a vast array of events – some fifteen thousand over the years – that required people to leave their homes and apartments and take advantage of everything the greatest city in the world had to offer. From the very start, I ventured into nooks and crannies to find the real New York, not just frequenting well-known venues but seeking out the weird and wild, the unusual and the strange.
For my tenth anniversary, we packed Fontana’s, a now-defunct club on the Lower East Side, and had live music, book readings, and a comics presentation. I had been considering something bigger for twenty when the pandemic lockdown hit and lasted longer than we all thought possible.
At first, I didn’t know what twi-ny’s future would be, with nowhere for anyone to go. But the arts community reacted quickly, as incredible dance, music, art, theater, opera, film, and hybrid offerings began appearing on numerous platforms; the innovation and ingenuity blew me away. The winners of twi-ny’s Pandemic Awards give you a good idea of the wide range of things I covered; you can check out part one here and part two here. (Part III is now up as well.)
I devoured everything I could, from experimental dance-theater in a closet and interactive shows over the phone and through the mail to all-star Zoom reunion readings and an immersive, multisensory play that arrived at my door in a box. Many of them dealt with the fear, isolation, and loneliness that have been so pervasive during the Covid-19 crisis while also celebrating hope, beauty, and resilience. I’ve watched, reviewed, and previewed more than a thousand events created since March 2020, viewing them from the same computer where I work at my full-time job in children’s publishing.
Just as companies are deciding the future hybrid nature of employment, the arts community is wrestling with in-person and online presentations. As the lockdown ends and performance venues open their doors, some online productions will go away, but others are likely to continue, benefiting from a reach that now goes beyond their local area and stretches across the continents.
On May 22 at 7:00, “twi-ny at twenty,” produced and edited by Michael D. Drucker of Delusions International and coproduced by Ellen Scordato, twi-ny’s business manager and muse, honors some of the best events of the past fourteen months, including dance, theater, opera, art, music, and literature, all of which can be enjoyed for free from the friendly confines of your couch. There is no registration fee, and the party will be available online for several weeks. You can find more information here.
Please let me know what you think in the live chat, which I will be hosting throughout the premiere, and be sure to say hello to other twi-ny fans and share your own favorite virtual shows.
Thanks for coming along on this unpredictable twenty-year adventure; I can’t wait to see you all online and, soon, in real life. Here’s to the next twenty!
White Snake Projects’ Death by Life: A Digital Opera in One Act redefined what live online opera could be
On July 4, 2020, I published Part I of the twi-ny Pandemic Awards, hoping that it would be the first of hopefully only two such postings celebrating the amazing innovation and creativity in dance, film, theater, food, opera, art, literature, music, and other forms of entertainment made online since March 2020.
As the pandemic lockdown proceeded, I followed that up with Part II on January 1, 2021. And now, a year later, comes the third — and final — edition of twi-ny’s Pandemic Awards, honoring the best, and most unusual, online presentations of 2021. To see some of the video highlights from March 2020 through last May, check out the “twi-ny at twenty” anniversary gala here.
Even as the omicron variant tears through New York City and the world, entertainment venues are back open, and more people are visiting museums, theaters, sports venues, and other forms of indoor and outdoor entertainment. Meanwhile, there is still much happening exclusively online. This Week in New York will continue to track virtual and hybrid productions of all kinds from across the globe, in addition to live performances happening in the five boroughs, so keep following this space for the best, and the worst, in live and recorded in-person and virtual events.
Happy 2022 to all — may you and your friends, family, and loved ones stay safe and healthy!
BEST FUTURISTIC PLAY
Edward Einhorn’s Alma Baya, Untitled Theater Company No. 61, A.R.T./New York. Edward Einhorn delves into isolation and living in pods in this in-person/online show about what might happen next.
BEST IMMERSIVE HISTORICAL DRAMA
Arlekin Players Theatre, Witness. Igor Golyak uses Arlekin’s Zero Gravity Lab to place viewers aboard the MS St. Louis in this interactive exploration of antisemitism.
BEST SHORT PLAY SERIES BY ONE PLAYWRIGHT
Steppenwolf Now, “Three Short Plays by Tracy Letts”:Night Safari, The Old Country, The Stretch. Steppenwolf did exemplary online work during the pandemic lockdown, including this triple crown of short one-acts by Tracy Letts, featuring Rainn Wilson, Letts, and William Petersen and Mike Nussbaum voicing puppets in a diner.
BEST GIFT ACCOMPANYING AN ONLINE PLAY
Third Rail Projects, Return the Moon. Immersive site-specific theater experts Third Rail Projects sent viewers a package including an exquisite little cut-paper diorama in conjunction with its interactive virtual show.
BEST FILMED OUTDOOR PLAY
Amy Berryman’s Walden, TheaterWorks Hartford. Twin sisters and an Earth Advocate argue over the future of the planet in Amy Berryman’s superb play about loss, loneliness, and reconnection, filmed in front of a socially distanced live audience in the woods by the Connecticut River.
BEST ZOOM PLAY TAKING PLACE ON ZOOM
Jake Shore’s Adjust the Procedure, Spin Cycle and JCS Theater Company. Zoom fatigue had not quite settled in yet when Jake Shore’s play about a university facing a crisis over the course of several Zoom meetings was released.
BEST USE OF LIVE CHAT IN A PLAY
Arlekin Players Theatre, chekhovOS /an experimental game/. The audience gets to vote on which Chekhov play Arlekin will perform, then argue in the chat about anything they want, including the quality of the production itself, with administrators encouraging all responses.
BEST ACTOR
Jason Alexander, Rob Ulin’s Judgment Day, Barrington Stage Company; Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, Spotlight on Plays. Jason Alexander was a riot in two virtual readings, as a greedy lawyer whose life is changed by a near-death experience in Judgment Day, which had an encore streaming in July, and as Mervyn Kant in Sisters, playing to his home camera with effusive glee.
Kathleen Chalfant elegantly performs Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for Keen Company benefit
BEST ACTRESS
Kathleen Chalfant, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Keen Company; Karen Malpede’s Blue Valiant, Theatre Three Collaborative. Theater treasure Kathleen Chalfant read directly from the published book of Joan Didion’s poignant memoir with an exquisite elegance, performed from her home, lending it a mesmerizing intimacy. She went outside for Blue Valiant, a play about a horse and a mother’s relationship with her daughter that was written by Karen Malpede specifically for Chalfant, who was lovely acting alongside George Bartenieff as pianist Arthur Rosen gave life to the horse in an unusual way.
BEST ACTRESS IN A FILMED PLAY ON A STAGE
Charlayne Woodard, The Garden, Baltimore Center Stage. Charlayne Woodard, who presented a stellar online version of her one-woman show Neat for MTC, returned to the stage for her two-character play The Garden, in which she and Caroline Stefanie Clay starred as a daughter and a mother trying to reconnect after a series of tragic events.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A VIRTUAL PLAY
Elizabeth Heflin, Michael Gotch’s Tiny House, Westport Country Playhouse. Elizabeth Heflin was wonderful as a cynical mother visiting her daughter and her environmental-nut husband in the mountains on the Fourth of July, as fireworks fly.
BEST PLAYWRIGHT FINALLY GETTING HER DUE
Adrienne Kennedy, “The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration & Influence,” Round House Theatre / McCarter Theatre Center. If you didn’t know much about hugely influential playwright Adrienne Kennedy, Round House Theatre and McCarter Theatre Center changed that with excellent virtual productions of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, Sleep Deprivation Chamber, Ohio State Murders, and Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, along with a series of online discussions celebrating the now-ninety-year-old experimental legend.
BEST NONTHEATRICAL INDOOR LOCATION FOR A PLAY
Sharon Karmazin’s home, George Street Playhouse. George Street board member Sharon Karmazin generously turned over her house to the New Jersey company for excellent virtual filmed productions of Theresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates and Becky Mode’s Fully Committed, allowing each one-person show to shine.
BEST OLD-FASHIONED RADIO PLAY
Lucille Fletcher’s 1943 Sorry, Wrong Number, Keen Company. Keen Company made it feel like you were listening to the radio in 1943 with its audio production of while Lucille Fletcher’s Sorry, Wrong Number, in which Marsha Mason thinks she has overheard a murder plot and desperately wants to stop the potential killing.
BEST ILLUSTRATED SHORT PLAY
Rajiv Joseph’s Red Folder, Steppenwolf Now. Carrie Coon narrates Rajiv Joseph’s devilishly clever and insightful short Red Folder, a kind of graphic novel come to life about being different.
BEST PLAY FILMED WITH AN AUDIENCE
Ryan J. Haddad’s Hi, Are You Single?, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Ryan J. Haddad’s autobiographical one-man show was recorded in front of a small, socially distanced audience of crew members at Woolly Mammoth; the moment when he is joined onstage by a man wearing a mask was as alarming as it was invigorating.
BEST PLAY ABOUT PARANOIA X the Experience. Aaron Salazar and Jason Veasey’s interactive online show casts the viewer as a trainee for the mysterious conglomerate known as WE, which appears to disdain individuality in favor of a faceless collective, touching a nerve as vaccines started promising an eventual return to normalcy.
BEST SCIENTIFIC PLAY
Jake Broder’s UnRavelled. This virtual collaboration between the Global Brain Health Institute and Trinity College Dublin told the true story of a doctor who started channeling composer Maurice Ravel through extraordinary paintings that had her husband worried about her mental stability; the play was accompanied by a discussion featuring the doctor who treated her.
BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN A PLAY
The Javaad Alipoor Company’s Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran. Javaad Alipoor and Peyvand Sadeghian used Instagram Live to relate the true story of a 2015 fatal car accident in Tehran, going backward in time to explore government corruption, unchecked capitalism, climate change, and the impact social media has on the younger generation.
BEST SOCIAL DISTANCING IN A PLAY
Mike Bartlett’s Cock, Studio Theatre; Kelli Goff’s The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls, Baltimore Center Stage. As companies started filming theatrical productions back on their stages, without an audience, they still kept the actors apart from one another, which was done intuitively in Mike Bartlett’s Cock and Kelli Goff’s The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls, both of which are structured to involve touch and physical closeness.
STRANGEST ONLINE PLAY Sloppy Bonnie: A Roadkill Musical (for the Modern Chick!), No Puppet Co., OZ Arts. Leah Lowe, Krista Knight, and Barry Brinegar add goofy cartoonish animation to the online version of this full-tilt campy musical about a road trip that leaves dead bodies in its wake, filmed live in front of a Nashville audience that can’t know what fun we are having watching it at home.
Odd Man Out offers a theatrical journey in a box to be experienced at home (photo by twi-ny/ees)
BEST AT-HOME INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
Martín Bondone’s Odd Man Out, Teatro Ciego and theatreC. Writer Martín Bondone and codirectors Carlos Armesto and Facundo Bogarín’s immersive memory play arrives at your home in a box containing elements for four of the senses as you listen on headphones while blindfolded, following the story of a blind musician returning to Argentina.
BEST COMEDY FILMED ON A STAGE
Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play, George Street Playhouse. After presenting two excellent online solo shows, Bad Dates and Fully Committed, filmed in a board member’s home, George Street Playhouse returned to its New Jersey stage for a stellar rendition of Terrence McNally’s hysterical comedy about theater that had me laughing out lout time and time again.
BEST SURPRISE ENDING OF A VIRTUAL PLAY
Christopher Chen’s Communion, American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). It would be unfair to reveal what Stacy Ross tells us at the conclusion of Christopher Chen’s online, interactive Zoom show, which comes complete with breakout rooms and is skillfully directed by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon.
BEST REVIVAL SERIES
MTC’s Curtain Call, The Niceties,Three Days of Rain,The Past Is the Past,Neat. Manhattan Theatre Club looked back in presenting virtual versions of past productions, in most cases reuniting the original casts, including the late Lisa Banes and Jordan Boatman in Eleanor Burgess’s The Niceties, about an allegation of racism at a prestigious university, as well as Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, and Bradley Whitford in Richard Greenberg’s family mystery Three Days of Rain and Charlayne Woodard re-creating her one-woman autobiographical show Neat.
BEST MUSICAL FILMED ON A STAGE
Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom, Woolly Mammoth and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater. Heather Christian reimagined her 2017 show, Animal Wisdom, for online viewing, recording it with her band onstage at DC’s Woolly Mammoth, incorporating aspects of the pandemic while Christian faces ghosts from her past.
BEST SITE-SPECIFIC INDOOR FILMED MUSICAL
Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, Out of the Box Theatrics, Holmdel Theatre Company, and Blair Russell. Jason Michael Webb’s adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 two-character sung-through musical about the end and beginning and end of a relationship follows Nasia Thomas and Nicholas Edwards through a cramped New York City apartment as concepts of time and space are obliterated.
BEST REIMAGINING OF A ONE-WOMAN PLAY
Studio Theatre, Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood. Studio Theatre associate artistic director Reginald L. Douglas reimagines Dael Orlandersmith’s gripping one-woman show about the police killing of Michael Brown as a piece for three Black women actors of different ages, who portray multiple characters as they move about the empty DC theater.
Dan Lauria and Wendie Malick are warm and welcoming in Sitting and Talking
BEST TWO-CHARACTER ZOOM PLAY ABOUT CONNECTING
Lia Romeo’s Sitting and Talking, Miles Square Theatre. Dan Lauria and Wendie Malick are delightful as two older single people attempting to connect through online dating, trying to dig themselves out of the loneliness they are both experiencing, and not just because of the pandemic.
BEST SOLO SHAKESPEARE PLAY
Patrick Page, All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, Shakespeare Theatre Company. Patrick Page gives a master class in Shakespeare, focusing on his many villains in this triumphant one-person show filmed onstage at STC.
BEST PODCAST PLAYS
Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors and The Designated Mourner, Gideon Media. The original casts of these two prescient plays by Wallace Shawn reunited for outstanding audio versions, with Julie Hagerty, Jennifer Tilly, Emily Cass McDonnell, Deborah Eisenberg, and Larry Pine joining Shawn.
BEST ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL DOC NYC 2021. The twelfth annual DOC NYC festival went hybrid, presenting more than two hundred films online and in theaters that look at where we are as a society today, in the midst of a pandemic that has killed more than five million people around the world, including several important films about Covid-19 and how we have responded to it.
BEST INTERACTIVE FILM Republique, the Interactive Movie. Created by director Simon Bouisson and writer Olivier Demangel, Republique puts the viewer in control of the action, choosing which of several unfolding scenes to watch during a terrorist attack in the Paris Metro.
Bob Dylan’s bizarre Shadow Kingdom delighted and confounded fans
BEST INCOMPREHENSIBLE MUSIC PRESENTATION Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan. Leave it to the enigma that is Bob Dylan to present a virtual production that had fans wondering whether any of it was recorded live, as microphones hid Dylan’s mouth throughout and the unidentified masked musicians might or might not have been actually playing their instruments; the lively chat ranged from angry fans wanting their money back to devotees proclaiming it was the best twenty-five bucks they had spent during the pandemic.
BEST DUET
Dorit Chrysler and Alexander Calder, “Calder Plays Theremin,” Museum of Modern Art. Berlin-based composer and sound artist Dorit Chrysler activated two works in MoMA’s “Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start” exhibition by using four theremins and a Moog Model 15 analog synthesizer to create a gorgeous eight-minute suite in four movements.
BEST BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO A LATE ROCK STAR “A Bowie Celebration: Just for One Day!,” Rolling Live Studios. Pianist Mike Garson transformed the annual David Bowie birthday tribute into a superstar online event, with Bowie songs performed by such Bowie acolytes as Yungblud, Michael C. Hall, Ian Hunter, Anna Calvi, Boy George, Trent Reznor, Perry Farrell, Macy Gray, Adam Lambert, Andra Day, Duran Duran, Peter Frampton, David Sanborn, Rick Wakeman, Ian Astbury, William Corgan, Gary Oldman, Gavin Rossdale, Joe Elliott, Bernard Fowler, Corey Glover, and Catherine Russell, among others.
Robyn Hitchcock played a series of home gigs in Nashville and London, joined by his partner and pets (including Perry the lobster)
BEST INFORMAL AT-HOME MUSIC SERIES
Robyn Hitchcock, Live from Tubby’s House. Taking a page out of British raconteur Richard Thompson’s book, who performed living-room concerts from his Jersey home with his partner, singer-songwriter Zara Phillips, fellow British raconteur Robyn Hitchcock performed a series of home concerts from Nashville and London over Mandolin and StageIt, accompanied by his wife, singer-songwriter Emma Swift, her pup Daphne, and their beloved cats, Ringo Baez and Tubby Grossman, a follow-up to their 2020 Live from Sweet Home Quarantine shows.
BEST INDOOR DANCE FILMED ON A STAGE
Yin Yue Dance Company, Ripple, 92nd St. Y. Harkness Promise Award recipient Yin Yue’s Ripple, filmed live in front of an audience at 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall, was a gorgeously flowing multipart work that was followed by a fascinating talk with the company.
BEST OUTDOOR DANCE FILMED ON A STAGE STREB Extreme Action, Jacob’s Pillow. Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action team returned to Jacob’s Pillow for the first time in twenty years, presenting twelve repertory works filmed live on the outdoor stage in front of an audience, with Streb offering commentary between pieces, an excellent aperitif to the company’s stirring live show at Manhattan West.
Stephen Petronio Co. remimagines Trisha Brown’s Group Primary Accumulation for its digital Joyce season
BEST OUTDOOR DANCE NOT ON A STAGE
Stephen Petronio Company, Accumulation, Joyce Digital Season. As part of its digital season at the Joyce, Stephen Petronio continued his Bloodlines program, in which he interprets seminal works by important choreographers, with a mesmerizing outdoor mixed-gender performance of Trisha Brown’s Group Primary Accumulation, filmed from high above, as if the four dancers are just another part of the natural world.
BEST DANCE ABOUT EMERGING FROM LOCKDOWN
Stefanie Batten Bland, Kolonial, Baryshnikov Arts Center. For her BAC digital commission, Stefanie Batten Bland contributed the filmed piece Kolonial, in which she and six other dancers try to burst out of a trapped isolation.
BEST ONLINE DANCE FESTIVAL “WOMEN / CREATE! A Virtual Festival of Dance,” New York Live Arts. The ninth annual “WOMEN / CREATE!” festival went digital with impressive works by Karole Armitage, Meagan King, Sidra Bell, Jennifer Muller, Tatiana Desardouin, and Jacqulyn Buglisi, followed by a rousing discussion.
BEST BALLET FILMED ONSTAGE
George Balanchine’s Emeralds, San Francisco Ballet. I let out a gasp as the curtain rose on San Francisco Ballet’s glorious version of George Balanchine’s Emeralds, the most dancers I had seen onstage together since the pandemic lockdown had started, and then gasped over and over again at the beautiful production, with stunning costumes and spectacular movement.
BEST ONLINE ART PROGRAM
David Zwirner, Program; Hauser & Wirth, .Philip Guston: On Edge. David Zwirner’s all-day online symposium featured discussions with artists, critics, curators, filmmakers, designers, and others, including Barry Jenkins, Hilton Als, Emily Bode, and Peter Schjeldahl, along with visits to Zwirner galleries around the world. Meanwhile, in conjunction with its superb exhibition “Philip Guston 1969-1979,” Hauser & Wirth hosted “Philip Guston: On Edge,” a symposium at the SVA Theatre that included William Kentridge responding to Guston’s The Studio as well as other strong presentations by Trenton Doyle Hancock and Rachel Rossin and conversations with Charles Gaines, Art Spiegelman, Max Hollein, Massimiliano Gioni, George Condo, Katy Siegel, Randy Kennedy, and Jasmine Wahi.
BEST ART MEDITATION
Pace Gallery, Monday Meditation at the Rothko Chapel. Pace offered a lovely opportunity to reflect on life from wherever you were while watching a peaceful shot inside Houston’s nondenominational Rothko Chapel as part of its fiftieth anniversary.
BEST ONLINE ARTS DISCUSSION SERIES
The New Museum, “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America.” Even if you weren’t ready yet to venture into arts institutions, the New Museum supplemented its outstanding “Grief and Grievance” exhibition with a series of talks with more than a dozen of the participating artists, all of which are still available online for free.
BEST LIVESTREAMED OPERA
White Snake Projects, Death by Life: A Digital Opera in One Act and A Survivor’s Odyssey: The Journey of Penelope and Circe. Cerise Lim Jacobs’s activist opera company, White Snake Projects, continued its inspiring, barrier-breaking livestreamed digital presentations with Death by Life, which dealt with systemic racism and mass incarceration, and A Survivor’s Odyssey: The Journey of Penelope and Circe, an inventive take on Odysseus which places the power in the hands of the women characters.
BEST DIGITAL OPERA FILMS Opera Philadelphia,Soldier Songs, The Island We Made, We Need to Talk, Blessed, Save the Boys. Opera Philadelphia redefined what opera could be in an online world during the pandemic lockdown, presenting a series of spectacular filmed operas about loneliness, legacy, and personal identity in these hard times; The Island We Made contained some of the most stunning visuals of the year.
Audience members take photos of themselves using props sent to their home in The Wandering
BEST PARTICIPATORY OPERA The Wandering, Actor and curator Calista Small, baritone and actor Jeremy Weiss, designer Charlotte McCurdy, theater artist Christine Shaw, filmmaker Lara Panah-Izadi, and animator Zach Bell took a unique look at the life of Austrian composer Franz Schubert in a multipart, multidisciplinary immersive production that included props sent to the at-home audience.
BEST OPERA MINISERIES
Boston Lyric Opera, Desert In. Boston Lyric Opera’s Desert In is a tantalizing and titillating eight-part soap opera that combines loss and loneliness with the supernatural, with Justin Vivian Bond as the lounge singer, Jon Orsini as the son, Jesus Garcia as Rufus, Edward Nelson as his new husband, Ion, Alan Pingarrón as Federico, Isabel Leonard as Cass, and Talise Trevigne as Sunny, all delighting in the delicious dastardly doings.
MOST ADVENTUROUS OPERA ADAPTATION
Boston Lyric Opera / Operabox.tv, The Fall of the House of Usher. Director James Darrah’s inventive virtual adaptation of Philip Glass and Arthur Yorinks’s 1988 opera, The Fall of the House of Usher, combined puppets, stop-motion animation, the refugee crisis, and a mysterious host in retelling Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale of the demise of a once-prominent family.
Uncle Floyd is back with Tuesday night watch parties of clips from old episodes
BEST VIRTUAL TV WATCH PARTY This Was the Uncle Floyd Show. David Bowie, John Lennon, Iggy Pop, Paul Simon, and the Ramones were among the fans of The Uncle Floyd Show, a faux-kiddie program that ran on various outlets, from local cable access channels to NBC, from 1974 to 1998, a supremely low-budget panoply of improvised sketches, music parodies, beloved puppets, and appearances by internationally renowned rock stars; the shows were never rerun and will never be available on DVD, so Floyd and his right-hand man, Scott Gordon, are hosting fifty-minute livestreamed clip compilations over StageIt hosted by tech Luddite Uncle Floyd Vivino himself, with a rousing, worshipful chat featuring longtime fans and some of the original cast and crew members. Snap it, pal!!
Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) is not exactly thrilled about turning thirty-five in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)
COMPANY
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $59 – $299 companymusical.com
Originally slated to open on Broadway on March 22, 2020 — Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday — Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of composer and lyricist Sondheim and book writer George Furth’s beloved Company finally arrives at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, two weeks after Sondheim’s sad, sudden passing just as we all could use, er, a little company. Having never seen the iconic musical before — it debuted on Broadway in 1970 and was revived in 1995 and 2006 — I cannot compare it to any of those editions or focus on the well-publicized changes to this new version, primarily involving several gender switches, most importantly to the main character, who has gone from Bobby the man to Bobbie the woman. But what I can report is that Elliott’s inventive adaptation has a fine first act and an utterly spectacular second.
Bobbie, played with a nagging trepidation by Katrina Lenk, is turning thirty-five and none too happy about it. After receiving a flurry of birthday messages, she says, “How many times do you get to be thirty-five? Eleven? Okay, come on. Say it and get it over with. It’s embarrassing. Quick. I can’t stand it.”
Harry (Christopher Sieber) and Sarah (Jennifer Simard) battle as Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) and Joanne (Patti LuPone) look on in Sondheim-Furth revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Bobbie is tired of being the third wheel. She puts a mylar “35” balloon on her wall and it ticks like a biological clock. Her married and engaged friends, some with kids, attempt to entertain her but they have their own lives away from her. She is spending more and more time with bottles of Maker’s Mark to try to make her forget her loneliness. She’s attracted to a dimwitted flight attendant, Andy (Claybourne Elder), who doesn’t exactly fulfill her needs.
She visits with Sarah (Jennifer Simard) and Harry (Christopher Sieber), who get into a riotous jiu-jitsu battle; Susan (Rashidra Scott) and Peter (Greg Hildreth), who, on their terrace, announce they’re getting divorced; Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels) and David (Christopher Fitzgerald), who get high and discuss Bobbie’s possible fear of being hitched (“It’s not like I’m avoiding marriage. It’s avoiding me, if anything. I’m ready,” she insists); Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson), who are getting married but Jamie is suddenly having doubts; her former lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who has made the kind of important decision Bobbie is unable to; her friend P.J. (Bobby Conte Thornton), who is in love with New York itself; and the older Joanne (Patti LuPone) and her third husband, Larry (Terence Archie), who party at a nightclub. “The phone is a phenomenon. Really. The best way for two people to be connected and detached at the same time,” Bobbie says. Joanne responds, “Second only to marriage.”
The story goes back and forth in time — the script explains, “The narrative is conveyed in a stream of consciousness technique and time moves both backwards and forwards, encompassing the past, present and future” — as Bobbie contemplates the state of her existence as she turns thirty-five, alone in the big city. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, / Three is company, safe and cheery,” she tries to convince herself. “Here is the church, / Here is the steeple, / Open the doors and / See all the crazy, married people!”
Friends gather to celebrate Bobbie’s (Katrina Lenk) birthday in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Two-time Tony winner Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,Angels in America) has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging constructed around Bunny Christie’s ingenious set; much of the action takes place in and around claustrophobic rectangular spaces framed by fluorescent lights. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) Bobbie, wearing a sensational sexy red pantsuit (Christie also designed the costumes), is trapped physically and psychologically in each scenario, from a tiny room in her apartment to the club to a street where every door is numbered “35.” Turning thirty-five and still being single is a nightmare that follows her wherever she goes.
Bobbie’s friends represent parts of herself as well as a potential companion. “Someone is waiting, / Sweet as David, / Funny and charming as Peter. Larry . . . / Someone is waiting, / Cute as Jamie, / Sassy as Harry / And tender as Paul,” she sings in “Being Alive,” adding, “Did I know him? Have I waited too long? / Maybe so, but maybe so has he.”
As portrayed by Tony winner Lenk (The Band’s Visit,Indecent), Bobbie is not after our sympathy or even our compassionate understanding; no mere old maid, she serves as a reminder of the uncertainty and isolation we all experience, whether coupled or not, regardless of how happy we might be. The scene in which Bobbie, in bed with Andy, sees one possible outcome of her life unfold before her is horrifyingly funny, whether you live alone or are married with kids; it’s a tour de force for both Elliott and the ensemble.
Joanne (Patti LuPone) has a bit of important advice for Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) in Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Two-time Tony winner LuPone (Evita,Gypsy) brings the house down just by saying, “I’d like to propose a toast,” prior to singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The signature role of Joanne has previously been performed by Elaine Stritch, Debra Monk, Sheila Gish, Lynn Redgrave, and Barbara Walsh, while the roll call of male Bobbys includes Dean Jones, George Chakiris, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, and Neil Patrick Harris.) The rest of the cast is exemplary as well, with shout-outs to Simard’s brownie-desiring Sarah, two-time Tony nominee Fitzgerald’s puppy-dog-eyed David, and Doyle’s breathlessly fast-paced rendition of “Getting Married Today.”
Liam Steel’s choreography is fun, as are illusions by Chris Fisher. One oddity is that characters often enter and exit the stage through the aisles, which are also frequented by theater staffers holding signs telling the audience to keep their masks on, momentarily diverting our attention while also reminding us of the situation we’re still in.
David Cullen’s orchestrations honor Sondheim’s complex melodies, performed by a fourteen-piece band conducted by Joel Fram that hovers above the stage. The second act explodes with an electrifying “Side by Side by Side” and never lets up through Bobbie’s closing soliloquy, “Being Alive,” an able metaphor for what we all need right now. Winner of three Olivier Awards — for Set Design (Christie), Supporting Actress in a Musical (LuPone), and Musical Revival — Company is more than just grand company in these troubled times, when we can all benefit from being together once again.
