Tag Archives: Emily Rebholz

THE LOW ROAD

Jim (Chris Perfetti) tries to unbalance the books while being celebrated by Old Tizzy (Crystal A. Dickinson) and Mrs. Trewitt (Harriet Harris) in The Low Road (photo by Joan Marcus)

Anspacher Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through April 8, $85
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris uses Adam Smith’s 1776 economic epic, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as the basis for his potent and rollicking The Low Road, running at the Public’s Anspacher Theater through April 8. The Texas-born Norris follows the development of American capitalism through the trials and tribulations of one Jim Trewitt, from his birth in 1758 to the year of independence, 1776. The bitter yet playful satire is narrated by Smith (Daniel Davis), who hovers around the stage and in the aisles as he watches the shenanigans unfold along with the audience when he’s not front and center, using business-speak to introduce scenes. “As the ladies within had no marketable skills to speak of, they set about to purvey the only commodity available to them,” he says about a brothel, where the madam, Mrs. Trewitt (Harriet Harris), and her one-eyed slave, Old Tizzy (Crystal A. Dickinson), have taken in a baby left to them by one “G. Washington of Virginia,” according to a note that also promises they will be “generously compensated” upon the lad’s seventeenth birthday. One day, young Jim (Jack Hatcher) fortuitously comes upon a work-in-progress by Smith, reading a paragraph that will change his life: “Every individual endeavours as much as he can to employ his capital in support of domestic industry. He neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, led by an invisible hand to promote an end that was never part of his intention. Nor is it the worse for society that it was no part of it.” Jim becomes a master with money, embezzling from Mrs. Trewitt without the slightest bit of guilt, and upon his seventeenth birthday, he (now played by Chris Perfetti) heads out on his own with a hidden stash under his hat. He buys himself a slave, John Blanke (Chukwudi Iwuji), loses a lot more than just his shirt to a mysterious masked thief, gets taken in by Brother Pugh (Max Baker), the presiding elder of the Bible-thumping New Light of Zion Colony of Waterfleet, and courts the daughter (Tessa Albertson) of the fabulously wealthy Isaac Low (Kevin Chamberlin). All the while, he is accompanied by Blanke, who turns out to be a lot more than the “deef . . . substandard product” he thought he purchased.

Jim Trewitt (Chris Perfetti) belittles his new slave, John Blanke (Chukwudi Iwuji), in Bruce Norris play at the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony winner Norris (Clybourne Park, A Parallelogram) fills The Low Road with economic language and potent platitudes that never get tedious or pedantic — and much of which is as true today as it was in Smith’s time, taking on income inequality, class, gender, legacy, luxury, labor, power, property, organized religion, the military, and race. “All profit is theft,” Constance Pugh (Susannah Perkins) declares. “As he considered the disparity betwixt himself and the man whose chamber-pot he presently emptied, he wondered what it should be that caused such divergence of fortune,” Smith says of Trewitt cleaning up after the Duke of Buccleuch (Gopal Divan) at the brothel. “Might I suggest you learn to value that which cannot be obtained at gunpoint?” Blanke tells Jim shortly after they had been shackled together, evoking Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones. “You provide commendable service to my men and in return we provide you with protection. Now, surely that’s a fair exchange, yes?” Captain Shirley (Richard Poe) reminds Mrs. Trewitt when explaining why he and his soldiers don’t have to pay for their jaunts with her ladies of the night. “Yet somehow it seemed that, as his authority increased, the affection of those within had diminished proportionally,” Smith says of Jim as he cheats Mrs. Trewitt and her coterie, continuing, “For, their needs were modest, and, as a future gentleman, his were understandably greater.” And just in case the audience doesn’t tune into how modern these ideas still sound, the second act begins with a brilliantly conceived scene that establishes Jim as the founding father of corporate greed.

Isaac Low (Kevin Chamberlin) shares his good fortune with his wife (Harriet Harris) as their daughter (Tessa Albertson) and Adam Smith (Daniel Davis) look on in The Low Road (photo by Joan Marcus)

Four-time Tony nominee and three-time Obie winner Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, A Parallelogram) superbly directs a cast of eighteen on the small Anspacher stage, which undergoes numerous changes by scenic designer David Korins, as chairs, tables, beds, barriers, a podium, and other elements are wheeled on and off; a short technical delay the night I went actually gave insight to the complexity behind the staging. Emily Rebholz’s period costumes and J. Jared Janas and Dave Bova’s wig and hair design are right on target, as is live music by violinist Josh Henderson, composed by Mark Bennett. Perfetti (Picnic, Cloud Nine) brings an engaging quirkiness to the role of Jim; you can’t help but root for him even though he does terrible things that will essentially lead to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. RSC veteran Iwuji (Hamlet, Hedda Gabler) is ferocious as John Blanke, representing America’s greatest shame and delivering the timeless line “But how much profit does one need? P’raps there ought be some penalty for the accumulation of unseemly wealth.” And Tony nominee Daniel Davis (Wrong Mountain, Talking Heads) lends it all a grand Shakespearean air. Thirty years ago, Gordon Gekko proclaimed, “Greed is good.” Norris ingeniously takes roads both low and high to reveal just how American that concept is, from the birth of the nation to this very minute.

INDECENT

Indecent takes audiences behind the scenes of controversial drama GOD OF VENGEANCE (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 6, $39 – $129
indecentbroadway.com

In late 1922, Sholem Asch’s controversial 1907 Yiddish play, God of Vengeance, premiered in an English-language version at the Provincetown Playhouse in the Village. On February 19, 1923, it moved uptown to the Apollo Theatre on Broadway. On March 5, the cast and producer were indicted on obscenity charges. (The play closed on April 14.) Ninety-three years later, on April 27, 2016, Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman’s Indecent, about the making of God of Vengeance, opened at the Vineyard Theatre by Union Square Park. The following April, it moved uptown to the Cort Theatre on Broadway. On May 3, the show received three Tony nominations, including Best Play (Vogel, in her Broadway debut) and Best Director (Taichman). How times have changed. I was moved by Indecent when I saw it at the Vineyard last June. However, since then, I caught the New Yiddish Rep revival of God of Vengeance, and the new U.S. administration has clamped down on immigration while anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. Those aspects have led me to fall in love with the Broadway version, which is bigger and better at the Cort. Richard Topol again stars as Lemml, an immigrant who is so taken with Asch’s (Max Gordon Moore) play that he becomes the stage manager for the show as it travels through Eastern Europe and ultimately to New York City; he also serves as the narrator, addressing the audience directly as he shares his memories — although he cannot remember how it all ends. (The audience, however, is unlikely to forget the elegiac, haunting conclusion.) In the play within a play, Yankl (Tom Nelis), a devout Jewish man, is running a brothel in his basement in order to be able to afford a better life for his daughter, Rifkele (Adina Verson), as well as a new Torah, which he hopes will protect her virtue. Much to his chagrin, however, Rifkele falls in love with Menke (Katrina Lenk), one of the prostitutes. Nelis is also Rudolph Schildkraut, the famous Austrian actor who headlined and directed the show. The famous lesbian kiss from God of Vengeance, one of the most romantic moments I have ever seen onstage, is handled beautifully by Pulitzer Prize winner Vogel (How I Learned to Drive, The Baltimore Waltz) and Taichman (How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, Familiar), as is the entire production.

Menke (Katrina Lenk) and Rifkele (Adina Verson) share a beautiful moment in Indecent (photo by Carol Rosegg)

As you enter the theater, the cast is already seated in a row of chairs at the back of the stage. There is a slightly raised platform in the center, where most of the action takes place. (The dark, ominous stage design is by Riccardo Hernandez.) Most of the dialogue is in English, with Tal Yarden’s projections explaining what language is actually being spoken. The play features several surreal elements, including the dispensation of sand from the characters’ sleeves, a clever use of suitcases, and sudden breakouts into joyous klezmer songs and Jewish folk dances during which a trio of musicians (clarinetist Matt Darriau, violinist Lisa Gutkin — who gets a bonus surprise — and accordionist Aaron Halva) gets involved. The choreography, which ranges from playful to portentous, is by David Dorfman; Christopher Akerlind’s stunning lighting is virtually a character unto itself. Much of the excellent cast is the same from the Vineyard, with standout performances by Topol (The Merchant of Venice, The Normal Heart), who is both observer and participant, and the sultry, sexy Lenk (Once, The Band’s Visit), who can set the hearts of men and women aflutter. The exhaustively researched Indecent, which was inspired by Taichman and Rebecca Rugg’s 2000 The People vs. The God of Vengeance at Yale, raises questions of freedom of speech, immigration, the suppression of art, homosexuality, and faith, as well as the power of theater itself. With all that’s going on in the world today, the play also serves as a warning that this could all happen again if we’re not careful.

ALL THE WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU

Judith Light is electrifying as a teacher with a sordid past in Neil Labute’s ALL THE WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU (photo by Joan Marcus)

MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 23, $69-$125
212-352-3101
www.mcctheater.org

“What is the weight of a lie?” Faye Johnson (Judith Light) asks at the beginning of Neil LaBute’s All the Ways to Say I Love You, a one-hour, one-character drama that has been extended at the Lucille Lortel through October 23. In her first solo show, Light is extraordinary as Mrs. Johnson, a high school teacher and guidance counselor in the Midwest who is retelling her story about a special relationship she had with a “second-year senior.” LaBute slowly and tantalizingly sprinkles in bits of the truth as Johnson, wearing a maroon cardigan and a wedding ring, moves about her somewhat ordinary office and talks about her somewhat ordinary life. (The suburban-school set design is by Rachel Hauck, the costume by Emily Rebholz.) Like other LaBute characters, Johnson balances between eliciting sympathy and moral outrage. She lights up when she delves into the time she spent with the student, Tommy, as opposed to the more mundane life she has with her husband. Johnson addresses the audience directly, making extensive eye contact, but this is no mere confessional or sympathy-seeking explanation; she is not resentful of her past but wistful and even celebratory.

LaBute (The Mercy Seat, This Is How It Goes) might be covering familiar territory, but he avoids the pratfalls of ripped-from-the-headlines melodrama in favor of a subtle narrative that carefully treads around love and betrayal, abuse and respect. Two-time Obie-winning director Leigh Silverman (In the Wake, Go Back to Where You Are) maintains a carefully modulated but not manipulative pace as various truths emerge in this MCC production, leading to a hard-hitting finale. Light, who has spent much of her stage and television career in supporting roles — the Who’s the Boss? star won two daytime Emmys as Karen Wolek on One Life to Live, has earned two primetime Emmy nominations as Shelly Pfefferman on Transparent, and has won two Tonys for featured roles in Other Desert Cities and The Assembled Parties — here is front and center, on her own, and she revels in it. The sixty-seven-year-old actress imbues Mrs. Johnson with a bursting sexuality and an infectious zest for life, alongside melancholic thoughts of what might have been, turning societal mores inside out to fulfill her desires. It’s a spectacular performance by one of our genuine treasures, a bold and engaging actress who keeps bringing us all to new peaks with every successive play and series. Yes, we do find out what the weight of a lie is, but we discover so much more as well.

INDECENT

INDECENT takes audiences behind the scenes of controversial drama THE GOD OF VENGEANCE (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Extended through June 19
www.vineyardtheatre.org

A quartet of current or returning shows in New York City are as much about their back stories as the central plays themselves, all of which date from the 1920s. The first two are straight-up revivals, reconstructed after years of intense research: The National Yiddish Theatre has resurrected The Golden Bride, from the Golden Age of Yiddish theater; the operetta returns to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in July following a widely hailed production at the end of last year. I’ll Say She Is at the Connelly Theater revives the Marx Brothers’ long-lost Broadway debut, lovingly patched together by Groucho impersonator Noah Diamond. The two others are plays-within-plays. On Broadway at the Music Box Theatre, Shuffle Along goes behind the scenes to detail “the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.” And now, in the Vineyard Theatre’s New York premiere of Indecent, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) and director Rebecca Taichman (Familiar, Marie Antoinette) take a powerful look at Sholem Asch’s controversial drama The God of Vengeance, which, when it came to Broadway in 1923, resulted in the arrest of members of the cast and crew on obscenity charges. (The new play was inspired by Taichman and Rebecca Rugg’s 2000 The People vs. the God of Vengeance.) The hundred-minute show alternates between scenes from Asch’s (Max Gordon Moore) first play and what went into the creation of The God of Vengeance, which was decried as being anti-Semitic even by Asch’s friends and colleagues, as it tells the story of a devout Jewish man (Tom Nelis) who is running a brothel in his basement in order to be able to afford a better life for his daughter (Adina Verson), who instead falls in love with one of the prostitutes (Katrina Lenk). Lemml (Richard Topol) serves as the narrator of Indecent, explaining how he became the stage manager of The God of Vengeance as it toured Europe and America but is unable to remember how the play ends.

Madje (Adina Verson) and Sholem (Max Gordon Moore) have no idea what a furor his first play will cause (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Much of the cast takes on multiple roles; Nelis also portrays Asch’s mentor as well as Rudolph Schildkraut, the star of The God of Vengeance, Verson is also Asch’s wife, Madje, and Steven Rattazzi plays another colleague of Asch’s in addition to producer Harry Weinberger. (The excellent cast also features Mimi Lieber.) Even the Klezmer musicians, violinist Lisa Gutkin, accordionist Aaron Halva, and clarinetist Mike Cohen, occasionally double down. The primary controversy revolves around a lesbian kiss, which is reenacted over and over with poetic grace, the women dressed in angelic white costumes (by Emily Rebholz). Most of the action occurs on a slightly raised wooden platform (the scenic design is by Riccardo Hernandez), with the cast often sitting on chairs lined up against the back wall, on which Tal Yarden’s projections give the time and place, announce when there’s a “blink in time,” and tells the audience what language is theoretically being spoken, which is particularly effective when Lemml speaks in his non-native tongue and suddenly is talking in broken English. There are a few musical numbers, including “Bei Mir Best du Schon (Means That You’re Grand),” and David Dorfman’s choreography is subtly sensational, especially a breathtaking moment when the cast members of the show-within-a-show each grabs their suitcase, which are piled on top of one another, evoking a vertical Zoe Leonard installation. And when it’s all over, it becomes clear why Lemml doesn’t remember the ending, a haunting conclusion that you won’t soon forget.

OUR LADY OF KIBEHO

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 7, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Inspired by several trips to Rwanda, Memphis-born playwright Katori Hall approaches the horror of the 1994 genocide from a different perspective in Our Lady of Kibeho, the second play of her three-work Signature Theatre residency and the follow-up to Hurt Village. Based on actual events, the play, set in 1981-82, tells the story of sixteen-year-old Alphonsine Mumureke (Nneka Okafor), a student at an all-girls Catholic school in the small village of Kibeho in Rwanda. As a choir sings a religious hymn in the Kinyarwanda language, the mean Sister Evangelique (Starla Benford) and the handsome headmaster Father Tuyishime (Owiso Odera) are arguing over what to do with Alphonsine, who claims to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, known as Our Lady of Kibeho. While the sister wants to severely punish the girl for telling such obvious lies, the father wants to first find out more about what happened. “I am not lying. I promise. I only speak the truth,” Alphonsine says, desperate for everyone to believe her, for she needs to spread the message Our Lady is imparting to her. Sister Evangelique and student leader Marie-Clare Mukangango (Joaquina Kalukango) conspire to prove Alphonsine wrong, but when more girls begin to see the visions, soon Father Flavia (T. Ryder Smith) arrives from the Vatican to attempt to validate the claim.

Our Lady of Kibeho takes place on the Signature’s Irene Diamond Stage, with three video projections by Peter Nigrini of the Rwandan mountains around Kibeho set high on the walls; combined with Rachel Hauck’s village set, Emily Rebholz’s costumes, and Michael McElroy’s African music, the design places the audience right in the middle of the action, especially as director Michael Greif (Next to Normal, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…) has members of the cast literally walk through the crowd. It’s as if the audience is being asked to believe just as much as the characters are, especially during a fantastic, otherworldly scene that closes the first act. But Hall (The Mountaintop, Children of Killers) never proselytizes, incorporating the ethnic battle between Hutu and Tutsi as the girls fight among themselves, their relationships changing as more of them believe what Alphonsine is telling them, a call for prayer to prevent a frightening prophecy of Rwanda’s future. The fine cast is led by Okafor, Benford, Odera, and Mandi Masden as Anathalie Mukamazimpaka, the second disciple. Our Lady of Kibeho is a moving, powerful, terrifically staged play about innocence and faith, about prejudice and belief, an involving tale no matter what religion, if any, you might be. (As with all Signature productions, the wall outside the theater is filled with information about the play and the real story, but it’s better to read it all afterward so as not to spoil the narrative surprises as the drama unfolds.)

SONDHEIM IN THE PARK: INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is given dazzling new life at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Extended through September 1, free, 8:00
Family-friendly matinee August 22, 3:00
Tickets available day of show at the box office and online here
shakespeareinthepark.org

The Public Theater’s revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony-winning Into the Woods has made a marvelous transformation to the Delacorte, as if it were the place it was always meant to be performed. Adapted from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production, the fairy-tale mosh-up, directed by Regent’s artistic director Timothy Sheader with codirection by Liam Steel, has been given a more adult touch, darker and sexier than previous versions. On John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour’s beautiful stage of multiple wooden ladders, walkways, and a tower constructed right into the actual woods of Central Park, a young boy (played alternately by Jack Broderick and Noah Radcliffe) creates the story of a childless couple, the Baker (Tony winner Denis O’Hare) and his wife (Oscar nominee Amy Adams), who are given a chance to have a baby if they collect four items for a wicked witch (Tony winner Donna Murphy): a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. So off they go on an adventure into a magical land populated by such characters as Little Red Ridinghood (Sarah Stiles) and the Wolf (Ivan Hernandez), Cinderella (Tony nominee Jessie Mueller) and a prince (also Hernandez), Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) and her prince (Cooper Grodin), and Jack (Gideon Glick) and his mother (Kristine Zbornik), who are forced to sell their cow because they are in desperate need of money. There’s also a mysterious man (Chip Zien, who played the Baker in the original Broadway production) wandering through the woods, popping up now and again to offer advice. As they strive toward their goal, the Baker and his wife must decide just how far they’re willing to go to have a child, and at what cost.

The Witch (Donna Murphy) and Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) face some surprisingly hard truths in INTO THE WOODS (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is an utter delight, highlighted by Stiles’s raunchy turn as Little Red Ridinghood, dressed like a hip skater chick, O’Hare’s self-examination as he considers doing things he never would have imagined, Jack’s cow, a skeletal figure carried around by another actor, and Murphy’s star turn as the Witch, walking with canes in a frightening get-up courtesy of costume designer Emily Rebholz. But things reach another level in the second act, which reveals what happens when happily ever after is not necessarily the end of the story. Such songs as “Into the Woods,” “Hello, Little Girl,” “Stay with Me,” “Witch’s Lament,” and “Your Fault” are brought to life by a live orchestra playing in the back of the fanciful tree house and a stellar cast that is game for just about anything, making the three-hour show breeze by in, well, a breeze. Nominated for ten Tonys and winning three back in 1988 (including Best Score and Best Book), Sondheim and Lapine’s show, which is essentially about the art of storytelling itself, feels as clever and fresh as ever. Rechristened Sondheim in the Park, this wonderful Shakespeare in the Park presentation, part of the Delacorte’s fiftieth anniversary, is everything that free outdoor summer theater should be.