Tag Archives: brooklyn academy of music

THE ICEMAN COMETH

Theodore “Hickey” Hickman (Nathan Lane) dispenses a whole lot more than just free drinks in THE ICEMAN COMETH (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 15, $35-$180
BAM Talk with Brian Denney and Nathan Lane, moderated by Linda Winer, $25, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

You’d be hard-pressed to find a sorrier collection of forgotten men, real or fictitious, than the group of pathetic drunks populating Eugene O’Neill’s great American tragedy, The Iceman Cometh, now enjoying a stirring four-hour, forty-five-minute revival at BAM (if the word “enjoy” can be used in describing this staggering work in any way). Written in 1939 but not produced until after WWII, in 1946, the play opens with most of a ragtag bunch of bums asleep on tables in Harry Hope’s (Stephen Ouimette) Last Chance Saloon and rooming house on the Bowery, awaiting the annual arrival of Theodore “Hickey” Hickman (Nathan Lane), a traveling salesman who comes to the bar once a year to celebrate Harry’s birthday by buying drinks for everyone. While the other poor souls are passed out, former anarchist Larry Slade (Brian Dennehy), pouring himself another shot of whiskey, tells bartender Rocky Pioggi (Salvatore Inzerillo), “I’ll be glad to pay up — tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They’ve all a touching credulity concerning tomorrows. It’ll be a great day for them, tomorrow — the Feast of All Fools, with brass bands playing! Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!” A moment later, Rocky, who speaks in a tough dem and doze New Yorkese, says to Larry, “De old Foolosopher, like Hickey calls yuh, ain’t yuh? I s’pose you don’t fall for no pipe dream?” To which Larry explains, “I don’t, no. Mine are all dead and buried behind me. What’s before me is the comforting fact that death is a fine long sleep, and I’m damned tired, and it can’t come too soon for me.”

That mood of hopelessness sets the tone of the play, with Larry the leading “Foolosopher” of men whose pipe dreams have long since turned into nightmares, with nothing to look forward to except the next, preferably free, drink. Slowly but surely, the others awake, wondering where Hickey is. “I was dreamin’ Hickey come in de door, crackin’ one of dem drummer’s jokes, wavin’ a big bankroll and we was all goin’ be drunk for two weeks. Wake up and no luck,” gambler Joe Mott (John Douglas Thompson) opines. Also arising are Hope, circus man Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.), Harvard Law alum Willie Oban (John Hoogenakker), former Boer Commando General Piet Wetjoen (John Judd), former British Infantry Captain Cecil Lewis (John Reeger), former anarchist editor Hugo Kalmar (Lee Wilkof), young former anarchist Don Parritt (Patrick Andrews), and former war correspondent James Cameron, better known as “Jimmy Tomorrow” (James Harms). But these men — along with day bartender Chuck Morello (Marc Grapey), his prostitute girlfriend, Cora (Kate Arrington), and two streetwalkers who work for Chuck, Margie (Lee Stark) and Pearl (Tara Sissom) — have long ago run out of tomorrows. So they spend their days and nights slowly drinking themselves to death, some hanging on to those pipe dreams, waiting for Hickey like Vladimir and Estragon will do a few years later in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, except in this case, Godot/Hickey shows up, waving a wad of bills and waking everyone up — but it turns out to be not nearly as satisfying as they were anticipating.

Harry Hope (Stephen Ouimette) and Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.) are holding on to their pipe dreams in THE ICEMAN COMETH (photo by Richard Termine)

Harry Hope (Stephen Ouimette) and Ed Mosher (Larry Neumann Jr.) try to hold on to their pipe dreams in a downtrodden Bowery bar (photo by Richard Termine)

Dressed in a sharp suit and wearing an even more impressive smile, Hickey bursts in at the end of act one, but he is not quite the good-time guy they have all come to know. Instead, Hickey is no longer drinking, and he has arrived with a message for each and every one of his minions, determined to tell them the truth about their sad lives. He is like a boisterous Bill W., the traveling stock speculator who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He’s going to buy them all drinks but make them pay in other ways, forcing them to look at what they’ve become. “If anyone wants to get drunk, if that’s the only way they can be happy, and feel at peace with themselves, why the hell shouldn’t they? They have my full and entire sympathy,” Hickey tells Harry. “I know all about that game from soup to nuts. I’m the guy that wrote the book. The only reason I’ve quit is — well, I finally had the guts to face myself and throw overboard the damned lying pipe dream that’d been making me miserable, and do what I had to do for the happiness of all concerned — and then all at once I found I was at peace with myself and I didn’t need booze any more. That’s all there was to it.” Of course, that’s not all there is to it, as is revealed during the next three acts.

Larry Slade (Brian Dennehy) is determined to drink himself to death in Eugene O’Neill’s classic American tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

In 1990, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre staged a revival of The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls and starring Dennehy as Hickey. More than twenty years later, Dennehy told longtime collaborator Falls that he wanted to play Larry in a new production. Upon hearing that, Lane contacted Falls, explaining that he had always dreamed of playing Hickey. The show was a huge success in Chicago in 2012, and it is now a huge success at BAM, where it fits in wonderfully with the Harvey’s artfully distressed shabby chic interior. The Harvey doesn’t usually use a curtain, but it does so for The Iceman Cometh, revealing a different set for each act, designed by Kevin Depinet (inspired by John Conklin); there is actually an audible gasp when the third act begins in the main bar area, shown in an unusual narrow perspective leading to a doorway that offers a kind of freedom — and real life — that no one in the play seems to want. Natasha Katz’s lighting design often keeps things in the dark, echoing the lost dreams of these miserable characters. This nearly five-hour production, with three full intermissions, might be epic in scope, but it is beautifully paced by Falls, never dragging, instead moving with a sometimes exhilarating gait.

Dennehy (Love Letters, Death of a Salesman) fully captures the heartbreaking duality that exists inside Larry, a clearly intelligent man who has given up his reason for being, someone who could make a difference in the life of all those around him — especially Don, who is seeking him out as a father figure — but he has instead buried himself in the bottle. Lane (It’s Only a Play, The Nance) shines as Hickey, bringing an exuberance to the role that occasionally goes over the top, particularly in the final monologue, not quite hitting its darker quality, but he and Dennehy have a beguiling camaraderie together in these iconic roles. (The play premiered on Broadway in 1946 and has been revived on the Great White Way in 1973, 1985, and 1999; over the years, Hickey has been portrayed by James Barton, James Earl Jones, Dennehy, Lee Marvin, Kevin Spacey, and, most famously, Jason Robards onstage and on film, while Slade has been played by Robert Ryan, James Cromwell, Conrad Bain, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Patrick Stewart.) The Iceman Cometh has never been an easy show to put on or to sit through; don’t be surprised when you see a handful of people exiting the theater and hailing cabs at each intermission. But it’s their loss, as this is a staggering production that looks deeply into the heart of America with a raw honesty that compels audiences to look deep into their own hearts as well.

THE MARIINSKY AT BAM

Jerome Robbins’s IN THE NIGHT is part of Chopin evening presented by the Mariinsky Ballet at BAM (photo by N. Razina)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
January 14-25, $30-$185
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.mariinsky.ru/en

Now in its 232nd season, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg has been home to Balanchine and Baryshnikov, Nijinsky and Nureyev. This month the Mariinsky Opera, Ballet, Orchestra, and Chorus will settle in for an exciting residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with four presentations January 14-25 that speak to its past, present, and future. On January 14, artistic director Valery Gergiev will conduct Rodion Shchedrin’s The Enchanted Wanderer, based on tale by Nikolai Leskov. The production is directed by Alexei Stepanyuk, with sets by Alexander Orlov, costumes by Irina Cherednikova, and choreography by Dmitry Korneyev. The Enchanted Wanderer is followed January 15-23 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a longtime staple that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in 1895 and then revised in 1950 by Konstantin Sergeyev. Gergiev and Gavriel Heine conduct; the libretto is by Vladimir Begichev and Vasily Geltzer, with sets by Igor Ivanov and costumes by Galina Solovyova. Among the performers are Mariinsky principal dancers Viktoria Tereshkina, Ulyana Lopatkina, Yevgeny Ivanchenko, Yekaterina Kondaurova, and Vladimir Shklyarov, depending on which night you go. The Mariinsky’s 2002 production of Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella glides into BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House January 17-20, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky and conducted by Gergiev; the libretto is by Nikolai Volkov inspired by Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, with sets by Ilya Utkin and Yevgeny Monakhov and costumes by Elena Markovskaya. Principal dancers include Kondaurova, Shklyarov, and Diana Vishneva. The Russian invasion concludes January 24-25 with Chopin: Dances for Piano, comprising Michel Fokine’s 1908 Chopiniana, Jerome Robbins’s 1970 In the Night, and Benjamin Millepied’s 2011 Without, all set to the music of Frédéric Chopin, with Gergiev serving as musical director and Alexandra Zhilina, Liudmila Sveshnikova, and Philipp Kopachevsky taking turns at the piano. Principal dancers include Shklyarov, Kondaurova, Ivanchenko, and Lopatkina.

THÉÂTRE DE LA VILLE: SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Théâtre de la Ville is back at BAM with an awe-inspiring production of Luigi Pirandello’s absurdist masterpiece (photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez)

Théâtre de la Ville is back at BAM with an awe-inspiring production of Luigi Pirandello’s absurdist masterpiece (photo by Richard Termine)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
October 29 – November 2, $20-$75
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.theatredelaville-paris.com

As audience members begin filing into the BAM Harvey to see Théâtre de la Ville’s awe-inspiring production of Luigi Pirandello’s absurdist classic Six Characters in Search of an Author, there is already a man onstage, suspended from above, painting a trompe-l’oeil blue sky backdrop; he is soon joined by a young woman who sits at a sewing machine, making costumes while quietly singing “O sole mio.” These two actions subtly announce that what we are about to see is artifice — what Pirandello called “the theater of the theater” — albeit multilayered artifice of the very highest order. For the next two hours, we are treated to a rapturous display of intensely clever stagecraft, filled with self-referential jokes about the theater, intellectual discussions of illusion vs. reality, and a search for nothing less than the very meaning of existence. A dictatorial director (Alain Libolt) is preparing his cast and crew to rehearse the second act of Pirandello’s The Rules of the Game when six mysterious people, all dressed in black, suddenly appear, claiming to be fictional characters abandoned by their author and now seeking a place where they can tell their story, which is the whole reason for their being. The director, the stage manager (Gérald Maillet), the actors (Charles-Roger Bour, Sandra Faure, Olivier Le Borgne, and Gaëlle Guillou), the carpenter (Pascal Vuillemot), and the assistant (Jauris Casanova) are at first dubious of the six strangers, but soon the father (Hugues Quester) convinces them to hear them out, so they delve into a soap-opera-like tale of faded love, mourning, incest, sibling rivalry, and horrific tragedy also involving the sexy stepdaughter (Valérie Dashwood), the grieving mother (Sarah Karbasnikoff), the estranged son (Stéphane Krähenbühl), the awkward teenager (Walter N’Guyen), and the adorable little girl (Sierra Blanco).

Glorious production seeks to life the veil on some of the many mysteries of the theater (photo by Richard Termine)

Glorious production seeks to lift the veil on some of the many mysteries of the theater (photo by Richard Termine)

No one onstage has a name, save for the surprise arrival of Madame Pace (Céline Carrère); everyone else represents a stock character determined to experience their individual purpose, their raison d’être, whether in the play, the play-within-a-play, or the play-within-a-play-within-a-play. There are no rules to this sly game directed by Théâtre de la Ville head Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, who was last at BAM in October 2012 with another delightful absurdist classic, Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. This is his third time staging Six Characters in Search of an Author, and he clearly knows his way around this existential journey of life as theater, and theater as life, expertly translated and adapted by François Regnault. The cast is uniformly excellent, led by Libolt, Dashwood, and Quester, who won the Critics’ Award for Best Actor for Théâtre de la Ville’s original 2001 production. Throughout the play, which is itself, of course, set in a theater, various characters look out at the seats, which to them are empty but to the actors playing them are filled with onlookers, furthering the self-referential nature of the show and the relationships between actor and audience, creator and creation. The director even references the subtitles at one point, reminding everyone that this is, at its most basic, an Italian play put on by a French company in an American city. Every moment is pure genius, a palimpsest of metas that keep piling on in glorious ways, a celebration of just what the theater can do and be, from behind the scenes to the last row of the balcony.

BEIJING DANCE THEATER: WILD GRASS

Beijing Dance Theater returns to BAM with poetry-inspired WILD GRASS (photo by Li Huimin)

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
October 15-18, $20-$40, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.beijingdancetheater.org

Three years ago, China’s Beijing Dance Theater made its U.S. debut with the three-part Haze, an emotional, abstract examination of environmental and economic crises that was part of BAM’s 2011 Next Wave Festival. Founded in 2008 by choreographer Wang Yuanyuan, visual artist Tan Shaoyuan, and lighting and set designer Han Jiang, BDT is back in Brooklyn for the 2014 Next Wave Festival this week with another three-part presentation, Wild Grass. In choreographing the work, which combines tradition with modernity, Wang found inspiration in Lu Xun’s seminal 1927 prose-poetry collection, Wild Grass, also known as Yecao and Weeds, which includes such poems as “The Shadow’s Leave-Taking,” “My Lost Love,” “Revenge,” “Hope,” “Snow,” “Tremors of Degradation,” and “The Awakening.” The three sections, “Dead Fire,” “Farewell, Shadows!” (aka “Farewell of the Shadow”), and “Dance of Extremity,” each of which will have a different kind of floor, delve into the nature of human spirit and perseverance. The first movement, in BDT’s own poetic description, “has burning form but no flickering. It stands frozen like corals, with black smoke curdled on its tips that makes you wonder whether it has just emerged from a house on fire — and that is why it looks burnt and dead.” That is followed by “Farewell, Shadows!,” in which “I linger between light and darkness; know not whether it is dusk or dawn. Let me raise my ashen grey hand and feign a toast; I shall journey far, far away, unbeknownst to all.” The evening concludes with “Dance of Extremity,” where “there remains only the vast wilderness; this dried couple, completely naked, sword in hand, stand in the middle. With dead men’s eyes they observe with gusto the withering passers-by in a great bloodless carnage. They are eternally plunged into life’s giddy, excruciating bliss.” Wild Grass runs October 15-18 at BAM’s Harvey Theater; on October 18, Wang will lead an afternoon class at the Mark Morris Dance Center for experienced and professional dancers ($25, 3:00).

Dancers glide across the stage in “Farewell, Shadows,” second section of WILD GRASS (photo by Jan Jiang)

Dancers glide across the smooth stage in “Farewell, Shadows,” second section of WILD GRASS (photo by Jan Jiang)

Update: As with Beijing Dance Theater’s 2011 U.S. debut at BAM, Haze, the company’s 2014 Next Wave Festival presentation, Wild Grass, is very much about surface. However, while the three sections take place on three different floor surfaces, artistic director, choreographer, and cofounder Wang Yuanyuan and the dancers never quite get below the surface in the work, which was inspired by the prose poetry of writer and activist Lu Xun. The fourteen dancers are individually technically proficient, but they never really catch fire as a unit, although Wu Shanshan stands out when she invigorates the second part with passion and humor otherwise missing from the evening. At several points, it’s possible to see how the dancers prepare their bodies for what is going to happen next, like a baseball hurler telegraphing his pitches. The first movement, “Dead Fire,” set to a minimalist piano score composed by Su Cong and played by He Peixun, takes place on a standard black dance floor that is continually littered with paper confetti that evokes snow, with the moon and white-capped mountains on the backdrop; “Farewell, Shadows” features electronic music by Biosphere and Kangding Ray and a slippery white floor across which the women glide, towed by male dancers; and “Dance of Extremity” has music composed by Wang Peng, with Yahg Rui on violin and Wang Zhilin on cello, as the dancers trudge through a straw-covered field that rises slightly in one corner, where a man stands next to a hanging rope. To paraphrase what we said in our review of Haze, there’s a lot to admire about Wild Grass, but Wang never quite achieves the narrative flow she aspires to.

EMBERS

Andrew Bennett prepares to enter the mind of Henry in Samuel Beckett’s EMBERS (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
September 17-20, $35-$50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.panpantheatre.com

Revivals of the absurdist works of Samuel Beckett can almost always be found somewhere in the city, but there’s been a surfeit of fine productions of late, including C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s Fragments at BAC, Trevor Nunn’s All That Fall with Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon at 59E59, Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt at BAM, and, most famously, this year’s Broadway version of Waiting for Godot with Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Now Pan Pan Theatre, based in Beckett’s hometown of Dublin, has added quite a dash of panache to their production of his second radio play, Embers, a 1959 work that Beckett himself was disappointed with; “My fault, text too difficult,” he wrote to American director Alan Schneider in a letter after its first airing. As the fifty-five-minute U.S. premiere, running at the BAM Harvey through September 20 as part of the Next Wave Festival, begins, three men and one woman walk around a stage strewn with rocks, a large object in the center covered by a tarp, as dozens of cables holding eight evenly spaced small speakers apiece dangle from the ceiling, essentially announcing that this is very much about sound. Gentle, soothing surf can be heard as one of the men pulls the tarp off the object, revealing a stunning skull. Then Andrew Bennett and Áine Ní Mhuirí step behind the skull, the former, as Henry, occasionally visible through the right eyehole, the latter, as his wife, Ada, behind the left. They remain there as Henry, in a deep, booming voice made for radio, relates stories from his life, concentrating on the mysterious death of his father, his relationship with Ada, and his thoughts about their daughter, Addie. Various phrases repeat — “white world, great trouble, not a sound,” along with calls for hooves that are answered and screams of “Christ!” that are not — in Henry’s long monologues that open and close the show, framing a conversation between husband and wife that brings up old memories.

Áine Ní Mhuirí wanders the rocky shore of memory in Peter Pan Theatre production at BAM (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

Áine Ní Mhuirí wanders the rocky shore of memory in Pan Pan Theatre production at BAM (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

“Laugh, Henry, it’s not every day I crack a joke,” Ada says. “Laugh, Henry, do that for me.” “You wish me to laugh?” he asks. “You laughed so charmingly once,” she responds. His attempt at laughter is both funny and sad as he chortles, “Any of the old charm there?” Among the stories that crop up in Henry’s mind as he contemplates his failure as a writer, father, husband, and son and his own impending death are Addie getting scolded by her piano teacher and the odd tale of Bolton and Holloway, two men who might or might not represent Henry and/or his father (as might Ada and Addie, two names that are not only oddly similar but are close to “Dad” and “Daddy”). Indeed, there is an ambiguity throughout Embers that both confuses and delights; those looking for specific meaning are unlikely to find it, much like Henry’s search through his mind-skull for the meaning of his own existence. Director Gavin Quinn keeps things visually interesting through Aedín Cosgrove’s lighting, which focuses on different parts of Andrew Clancy’s skull, and Jimmy Eadie’s sound design, which melds the lapping of the ocean with changes in Henry’s vocal pitch. Ultimately, all that is left are “embers, sound of dying, dying glow,” Henry poetically says, as death stares him in the face, as it does to each and every one of us. (For more Beckett in Brooklyn, BAM will be presenting the Royal Court Theatre’s trio of one-woman plays, Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby, October 7-12 starring Lisa Dwan and directed by longtime Beckett collaborator Walter Asmus.)

CEDAR LAKE CONTEMPORARY BALLET: TENTH ANNIVERSARY SEASON

Cedar Lake will perform Jo Strømgren’s NECESSITY, AGAIN as part of tenth anniversary celebration at BAM (photo by Paula Lobo)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
June 11-14, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.cedarlakedance.com

Chelsea-based Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is celebrating its tenth anniversary season by making its BAM debut this week. The company, which was founded by Wal-Mart heiress Nancy Laurie in 2003, is known for its intense physicality and often jaw-dropping athleticism, performing works by a wide range of international choreographers. Now under the leadership of longtime ballet master and rehearsal director Alexandria Damiani, who was recently named artistic director following Benoit-Swan Pouffer’s departure last year, the sixteen-member company will present five works over three programs June 11-14 at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. The evening-length Orbo Novo (June 11 & 13), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s adaptation of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book about her recovery from a stroke, is a spectacular piece, with music by Szymon Brzóska (played live by the Mosaic String Quartet) and a mind-blowing set by Alexander Dodge. Composer and choreographer Hofesh Shechter’s Violet Kid (June 12) has a postapocalyptic feel, with the score performed live by a cello, viola, and double bass ensemble. Alexander Ekman’s Tuplet (June 12 & 14) features Amith A. Chandrashaker’s lighting design with rectangular boxes, along with video projections and Mikael Karlsson’s jazzy music. Jo Strømgren’s playful Necessity, Again (June 12 & 14) includes flying papers, songs by Charles Aznavour, and text by Jacques Derrida. “The necessity to formulate everything in words, even the theme of necessity itself, is possibly a disease of our time,” Strømgren explains. “This piece is an homage to the free space between the words — to the moments when we just want to be emotional and not rational.” And associate choreographer Crystal Pite’s Grace Engine (June 14) combines Jim French’s lighting and Owen Belton’s score to let the company really show off its many strengths. (Cedar Lake will also present a free showcase of works in progress at its Chelsea headquarters July 29-30 as part of its inaugural Cedar Lab initiative, in which Cedar Lake dancers Jon Bond, Navarra Novy-Williams, Matthew Rich, Joaquim de Santana, and Vânia Doutel Vaz will create new pieces for the company.)

NOW: IN THE WINGS ON A WORLD STAGE

Documentary goes around the world, following Kevin Spacey and company as they stage contemporary version of RICHARD III

NOW: IN THE WINGS ON A WORLD STAGE (Jeremy Whelehan, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
May 2-8
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.kevinspacey.com

Now: In the Wings on a World Stage, the marvelous new documentary that follows a transatlantic company as it performs Richard III around the globe, did not get its name only because it’s the first word of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy — “Now is the winter of our discontent” — nor simply because it takes place in modern times in modern dress with nods to modern technology, but also because it’s a spine-tingling celebration of the immediacy of live theater. In 2009, Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, the Old Vic under the leadership of Kevin Spacey, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, led by Joseph Melillo, formed a partnership in which British and American actors would present five classic plays over three years. Dubbed the Bridge Project, the wildly successful venture concluded in 2012 with Spacey, an American living and working in London, starring in Richard III, directed by Mendes, a Brit living and working in America. It was the first time they had teamed up since 1999’s American Beauty, the Best Picture Oscar winner that also nabbed Academy Awards for Mendes (Best Director) and Spacey (Best Actor). Spacey hired first-time feature filmmaker Jeremy Whelehan, an assistant director at the Old Vic, to go behind the scenes of Richard III, following the cast and crew as they rehearse, then travel to such locations as Doha, Beijing, Istanbul, Sydney, Epidaurus, Naples, and Hong Kong before wrapping things up in Brooklyn.

Kevin Spacey gets ready to take the stage as Shakespeare’s most treacherous villain

Whelehan and editor Will Znidaric let the plot of the play unfold in chronological order over the course of the epic tour, which ranges from the Epidaurus Amphitheatre, the fourth-century BCE architectural wonder that seats fourteen thousand and has breathtaking acoustics, to dazzlingly modern venues in Qatar and China. In each city, the participants — which also include Gemma Jones as Queen Margaret, Haydn Gwynne as Queen Elizabeth, Chuk Iwuji as Buckingham, Jeremy Bobb as Sir William Catesby and the second murderer, Simon Lee Phillips as Norfolk, Jack Ellis as Hastings, and Annabel Scholey as Lady Anne — discuss their approach to their roles, how audiences react differently in different countries, and what it’s like to be on this theatrical journey. Whelehan shows them experimenting with different methods, applying their own makeup, joking around backstage, and enjoying some of the local culture: boating in Italy, walking along the Great Wall of China, and rolling down sand dunes in the desert. But what shines through it all is their intense love of theater, of taking this splendid production around the world, growing richer as actors and as people, forming a unique kind of special family, with Spacey as the central father figure. Spacey, who played Buckingham in Al Pacino’s 1996 documentary, Looking for Richard — and employs Richard’s style of directly addressing the audience in his hit Netflix show, House of Cards — is clearly having a blast, and his insurmountable joy and dedication are infectious. Theater is notoriously difficult to bring to the big screen, but Whelehan captures the moment, with no discontent, making viewers feel like they are onstage with the actors yet also jealous of the deep bonds they have formed. Now, which had its world premiere last month at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens at the IFC Center on May 2, will have you salivating to see — or perhaps even get involved in — live theater, which ultimately is Spacey’s goal, one that he majestically achieves. Spacey, who also is the executive producer of the film, will be at the IFC Center opening night for Q&As after the 7:00 and 7:30 shows and to introduce the 9:15 screening.