Tag Archives: Jan Pappelbaum

A DEVASTATING BLAST: ARLEKIN’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE COMES TO CLASSIC STAGE

The cast of Arlekin’s Merchant of Venice playfully poses at press rehearsal (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

ARLEKIN IN RESIDENCE: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East Thirteenth St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday, November 22 – December 22, $59-$129
www.classicstage.org/venice
www.arlekinplayers.com

Introducing a press rehearsal of two scenes from Igor Golyak and Arlekin Players Theatre’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice at Classic Stage, producer Sara Stackhouse said, “Igor directed a very early iteration of this — this is quite different — but it was the DNA of this version of The Merchant of Venice. It was hilarious, and devastating, in Boston. It was like a punch in the face to antisemitism, and there were a lot of folks at that time who said to us, ‘Why are you doing a play on antisemitism? Why are you doing a Jewish play?’ One of the things that I have found working with incredible artists, Igor being one of them, is the way they feel the undercurrent of what is happening in the world all the time, and often ahead of time, and begin to bring it to the surface in artistic projects. That has been true for all the project I’ve done with Igor and through Arlekin. Unfortunately, it has come further and further and further to the surface not only in the art we’re making but also in the world. So we’re now doing this version of The Merchant of Venice in the context of October 7 and what happened in Amsterdam and the election and a real rise in hatred and antisemitism in the world. That canary in the coal mine — there’s no mine now; it’s like a canary flying out around the world. But one of the ways that actual humans respond to tragedy is they don’t sit and cry; they try to laugh; they try to survive. So this play is a comedy, and it’s a blast until it’s devastating.”

Boston-based Arlekin continues its residency at Classic Stage with The Merchant of Venice, following its highly acclaimed staging of Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 drama, Our Class, which was inspired by a horrific 1941 pogrom that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne in Poland. Running November 22 to December 22, the uniquely unpredictable work is built around a cable access program that is putting on the play, complete with low-budget foibles, casting controversies, and technical glitches. T. R. Knight stars as the host of The Antonio Show, with Richard Topol as Shylock, Alexandra Silber as Portia, Gus Birney as Jessica, Tess Goldwyn as Nerisa, José Espinosa as Bassanio, Stephen Ochsner as Launcelot Gobbo, and Noah Pacht as Lorenzo. At one point, Shylock puts on a Dracula costume, a funny yet incisive way to demonize the character who famously declares, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“The first Quarto published in 1600 titled this play The most excellent historie of the merchant of Venice with the extreame crueltie of Shylocke the Jewe towards the sayd merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh: and the obtayning of Portia by the choyse of three chests. That’s a mouthful,” Golyak, who was born in Kyiv and came to America as a Jewish refugee when he was eleven, said in a statement. “It casts Shylock as a cruel villain and sets the expectation of a love story, a comedy, and a ruinous tragedy all wrapped into one. We are true to this in our production and we deliver all of it — an undercurrent of bias, a comedy, romance, action, and escapades — a real romp of a performance. But antisemitism is a light sleeper, and as the story plays out, it inevitably awakens and the result is devastating. It mirrors who we are, the times we live in, and how quickly the tides can turn.”

Rich Topol stars as Shylock and José Espinosa is Bassanio in Arlekin’s Merchant at Classic Stage (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Golyak and Arlekin have previously presented such innovative virtual successes as Witness, State vs. Natasha Banina, and chekhovOS /an experimental game/ in addition to the hybrid The Orchard with Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“The more antisemitism rises in the world, the more people are hating on the Jews, the more Jewish I feel,” Golyak, whose great-grandparents were killed at Babi Yar, recently wrote. “But the play, and Jewish life, and this world are devastating. I’m shattered like glass. In sooth, as an artist, as a parent, as a Jew, and as a human, I guess I do know why I am so sad.”

“It’s a wild ride,” Golyak also noted about the play.

Judging from what I saw at the rehearsal — you can get a sneak peek here — it’s a wild ride we all need to take.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

RICHARD TOPOL ON ABRAM, SHYLOCK, AND ANTISEMITISM: OUR CLASS / THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Rich Topol first played Abram Baker in Our Class at BAM this past January (photo by Pavel Antonov)

OUR CLASS / THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East Thirteenth St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Our Class: Tuesday – Sunday, September 12 – November 3, $89-$139
The Merchant of Venice: Tuesday – Sunday, November 22 – December 22, $59-$129
www.classicstage.org
www.arlekinplayers.com

Earlier this year, Arlekin Players Theatre and MART Foundation’s timely new adaptation of Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 drama, Our Class, sold out a three-week run at the BAM Fisher as part of the Under the Radar festival. Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, the three-hour play, directed by the endlessly inventive Igor Golyak, focuses on antisemitism among a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a horrific 1941 pogrom.

In my January 30 review, I wrote, “The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. . . . Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.”

The show, which was nominated for Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk Awards, is back for a return engagement September 12 – November 3 at Classic Stage, with the same cast and crew. One thing that will be at least somewhat different is the staging, as Classic Stage is smaller and more intimate than the Fisher (199 seats vs. 250), and the audience sits on three sides of the action. Arlekin’s residency continues there November 22 – December 22 with the New York debut of its unique and unusual production of Shakespeare’s The most excellent historie of the Merchant of Venice with the exxtreame cruelitie of Shylocke the Jewe, featuring much of the same team as Our Class, including director Golyak and actors Richard Topol, Gus Birney, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Stephen Ochsner, and Alexandra Silber.

Topol, who has starred as Jewish characters on and off Broadway in such works as Indecent, The Chosen, Awake & Sing, Prayer for the French Republic, and King of the Jews, plays Abram Baker in Our Class, a student who leaves Poland and becomes a rabbi in America. In The Merchant of Venice, he will play Shylock, the Jewish moneylender previously portrayed by Edmund Kean, Edwin Booth, Jacob Adler, Orson Welles, Al Pacino, Laurence Olivier, John Douglas Thompson, Andrew Scott, and many others.

In my January 8 Substack post “‘class consciousness’: we are not safe. again.,” exploring Our Class and antisemitism in relation to Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7 and the aftermath, Topol explained, “Certainly the violence that is occurring in both Ukraine and Israel/Gaza is impacting my relationship and understanding of the play. And it’s making Our Class a story that feels even more important to tell. Because it’s based on true events that occurred not far from Ukraine. And because it’s about cycles of hate. And the violence that can come from that hate.”

As the company began rehearsals for the Classic Stage transfer, I asked Topol several questions about the two plays and his characters.

twi-ny: What similarities do you see between Abram and Shylock?

rt: Well, for starters, they are both Jews living through perilous times filled with antisemitism. They are both fathers who love their children deeply. They are both connected to their religion fully. And they both face moments where they struggle with how to respond to people who treat them with indignity.

twi-ny: What are their main differences?

rt: I think their main difference is how they respond to being treated with indignity. Shylock seeks revenge. He can’t see straight once he’s been broken. Abram is treated less harshly but he also is a kinder man who tries to come to terms with the world as it is in a way that allows for forgiveness or redemption or understanding. And I think that is because Abram is a rabbi who feels the blessings of his G-d around him, even as he suffers harm. Shylock is a businessman, a moneylender, and though he is connected to his Jewish faith, he isn’t as grounded in its teachings as Abram is. Abram creates this gigantic family, these generations of descendants whom he loves and cherishes. Shylock feels like he’s alone in the world, with only his one daughter as his ally. And once she’s gone he has nobody he can lean on, live for, or help him see straight.

Also, because of Abram’s inherent kindness, he sees the best in people, the hope for the world, the possibilities for the future. Maybe Shylock had some kindness in him somewhere but we certainly don’t see much if any of it during the course of the play. Maybe it was snuffed out when his wife died. But bottom line there is a hardness in Shylock’s soul as opposed to a kind of softness in Abram’s.

twi-ny: How might Abram have fared as the Venetian moneylender in Merchant, and how might Shylock have done as the rabbi in Our Class?

rt: That’s a great question and a fun thing to try to imagine. Abram seems like a pretty smart guy, so maybe he would have figured out how to make a successful go of it as a Venetian moneylender. He’s good with languages, he’s a hard worker, and he has a kind of can-do attitude that would have stood him in good stead. I like his chances.

Shylock as a rabbi . . . hmm . . . I’m thinking no way. At least not the kind of rabbi I’d like to hear at synagogue! He definitely feels strongly about his tribe, his people, his religion. But I don’t see him as having the right temperament to be a leader to his fellow Jews.

twi-ny: What would they think about the state of the world if they were alive today, with the same jobs?

rt: Shylock as a modern-day moneylender — a banker in this world of global capitalism — he might be just fine. I think most of the Jews of this time live with greater freedoms, respect, and opportunity than during Shylock’s time in Venice. He’d certainly recognize the antisemitism of our time, but if he were a banker in Venice now I think he might be thriving and might feel like a true equal to his Christian counterparts.

Abram, well, he was alive not that long ago. But I think he’d be heartbroken to see the rise of antisemitism in this country. My sense of him is of someone who loved and seized on the promise and opportunity of America, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. An immigrant who was always thankful for the chance to make a new and full life here. And he would be as disturbed by the hate and divisiveness of our time right now as many of us are.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

OUR CLASS

Our Class recounts a 1941 Polish pogrom and its aftermath (photo by Pavel Antonov)

UNDER THE RADAR: OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 11, $68-$139
www.bam.org
ourclassplay.com

“I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight. See what I mean?” the stage manager says in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Our Town. “So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”

In Igor Golyak‘s potent new revival of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 play, Our Class, at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space through February 11 as part of the Under the Radar festival, the first and second acts start with the cast sitting in a semicircle, holding and reading from scripts, as if copies of the play have been recently unearthed from a cornerstone, revealing a terrifying story that is not as widely known as it should be, and all too relevant to what is happening in the world today.

Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, Our Class follows a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a 1941 pogrom.

The audience is shown immediately when each character dies; their birth and death dates are written in chalk on a large, multipurpose blackboard. I preferred not to look too closely, instead learning their fate over the course of the narrative, but Golyak and Słobodzianek clearly want you to know who is going to live and who is going to die in their early twenties, in awful ways.

Richard Topol plays Abram Piekarz, the only Polish Jew who got out in time (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Richard Topol portrays Abram Piekarz, who serves as a kind of stage manager. Topol has played similar roles in such important plays about antisemitism as Indecent and Prayer for the French Republic; here he introduces each scene, which are called “lessons,” shuffling props, directly addressing the audience, blowing harp, appearing all over the theater (including in the aisles and on top of the blackboard), and remaining in touch with his fellow classmates after he moves to America and studies to become a rabbi.

At the start of the show, the characters share their hopes and dreams: Dora (Gus Birney) wants to be a movie star, Rysiek (José Espinosa) a pilot, Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) a seamstress, Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) a soldier, Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) a doctor, Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner) a teacher. Very few get to achieve their goals.

The first crack in the friendship between the Jews and the Christians occurs in the wake of the death in 1935 of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who had encouraged minority cultures in the nation. While Jakub is honoring the marshal’s accomplishments, Heniek (Will Manning) mockingly declares, “The marshal’s a prick with a circumcised dick. / His power he loved to abuse. / He married three times and committed his crimes / And sold all us Poles to the Jews!”

Later, the Christian students hold a prayer service in school, which upsets Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy), Jakub, and Rachelka, who chastises Władek (Ilia Volok) for throwing rocks at Jakub’s sister.

And then, during a party for the opening of a local cinema — made possible by the Soviet occupation of Poland — Rysiek shouts, “Death to the Commie-Jew Conspiracy. Long live Poland!” He leaves, but when a few of the Christians insist on dancing with Jews, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

It’s not long before blood is spilled and people are being brutally murdered.

“Classmates are like family. Better than family,” Zygmunt proclaims.

What happened was no way to treat family.

During the pandemic, Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke out of the pack with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, followed by The Orchard, a hybrid reimagining of The Cherry Orchard with Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Golyak (chekhovOS /an experimental game/, Witness) directs with a frenetic energy that is intoxicating; your eyes are always searching for the unusual, the unexpected. In Our Class, adapted by Norman Allen from a literal translation by Catherine Grovesnor, you won’t find characters just sitting and talking; there is constant motion and action throughout the space. Text is added to the blackboard. Victims are represented by balloons on which the actors draw faces. Two figures watch from overhead. Ladders are dragged across the set, used for multiple purposes. A soccer ball that previously brought the classmates together on their team is turned into a weapon.

Cameras and monitors are pushed onstage, projecting live recordings on the screen and the blackboard, then rolled back to the wings, where actors wait and watch intently when they’re not in the scene. At times there is too much happening all at once, complicated by anachronistic video usage, although it also firmly reminds us that this could happen again, as evidenced by the current rise of antisemitism around the world, particularly following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.

At three hours (with one intermission), the play is long, but any shorter and its lessons might be lost, and in any case, Golyak never lets it slow down. (Prayer for the French Republic is also three hours but doesn’t feel like it.)

Ten classmates learn more than they ever bargained for in New York premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek play (photo by Pavel Antonov)

The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. The set is by Jan Pappelbaum of the Schaubühne, with realistic сostumes by Sasha Ageeva, stark lighting by Adam Silverman, original music by Anna Drubich, immersive sound by Ben Williams, choreography by Or Schraiber, and projections by Eric Dunlap.

Topol (King of the Jews, The Normal Heart) is exceptional as Abram, the only one who got out of Poland before the 1941 pogrom; he imbues Abram — who in many ways is a stand-in for America, which entered WWII only when Pearl Harbor was attacked — with a soft, affectionate tenderness. Both Topol and Abram are genuine mensches.

Birney (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, The Rose Tattoo) will break your heart over and over again as Dora, Espinosa (Take Me Out, Fuente Ovejuna) will infuriate you as the bigoted Rysiek, Silber (Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Again) will shock and annoy you as Rachelka, Goldwyn, in her off-Broadway debut, will charm you as Zocha, and Volok (Gemini Man, The Gaaga) will utterly confound you as Władek. Burkovskiy (Solar Line, The Flight), Zafir (Arcadia, Everybody), Manning (Breitwisch Farm, Just Tell No One), and Ochsner (The Maxims of Panteley Karmanov, Everything’s Fine) round out the excellent ensemble.

Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.

In Our Town, Emily asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”

“No,” the stage manager replies.

And that’s a shame, because no one should have to go through such horrors again.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can find his personal essay on Our Class here.]

BAM NEXT WAVE: HAMLET

Thomas Ostermeier and Theater Schaubühne Berlin’ Hamlet continues at BAM through November 5 (photo © Stephanie Berger)

Who: Theater Schaubühne Berlin
What: Hamlet
Where: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theater at the BAM Strong, 651 Fulton St.
When: October 27 – November 5, $74-$175
Why: Five years ago, Lars Eidinger electrified Brooklyn with his stunning portrayal of Richard III, the wildest and best I have ever seen, in Thomas Ostermeier and Theater Schaubühne Berlin’s ferocious adaptation at the BAM Harvey Theater. Eidinger, Ostermeier, and Schaubühne Berlin are back at the Harvey with their frantic take on the Bard’s Hamlet, running through November 5. The tragedy has been seen here in New York in numerous recent versions and reimaginings, from Robert Icke’s staging at Park Ave. Armory in repertory with The Oresteia and James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham at the Public to Potomac Theatre Project’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet at Atlantic Stage 2, Dead Centre’s Hamnet at BAM Fisher, and Yaël Farber’s variation starring Ruth Negga at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

You can expect Eidinger to be a prince of Denmark unlike any other in this 165-minute adaptation, directed by Thomas Ostermeier and translated into German by dramaturg Marius von Mayenburg. The cast pairs Damir Avdic as Horatio and Guildenstern, Konrad Singer as Laertes and Rosencrantz, Robert Beyer as Osric and Polonius, amid other dual depictions, but it is Eidinger front and center, a mesmerizing actor who never holds anything back. You have been warned.

Update: It takes only minutes to realize that this Hamlet will resemble nothing you’ve ever seen. It opens with Eidinger, who at forty-six is about twice the age of his title character, beginning the “To Be, or Not to Be” soliloquy, which is supposed to unfurl in Act III. But he delivers only a few lines before joining the funeral of his murdered father, the former king, while his mother, Gertrude, and uncle, Claudius, stand under an umbrella at the burial. A cemetery worker has trouble with the coffin, water is sprayed from a hose, and the already unbalanced Hamlet, looking a bit doofy in his suspenders, falls face-first into the dirt over his father’s grave.

It’s Hamlet as vaudeville shtick, but with a camera that Hamlet uses to film himself and others as nefarious truths come out. Jan Pappelbaum’s set features lots of dirt and two white tables that move between the front and back of the stage, separated by a hanging curtain on which the live video is projected. (The costumes are by Nina Wetzel, music by Nils Ostendorf, video by Sébastien Dupouey, and lighting by Erich Schneider.)

A few moments later, when Claudius says, “But now, my nephew Hamlet, and my son — ,” a shocked Hamlet, unaware that his mother is betrothed to his uncle, does a double take and wonders aloud, “What? I didn’t get that,” then says to himself the more well known line, “A little more than kin, and less than kind.”

Eidinger is given free rein by Ostermeier, like an improv comic portraying the prince of Denmark. At one point, Eidinger jumped off the stage and approached a young man sitting front and center in the first row, wearing a black mask and a hoodie. Eidinger, who speaks German as Hamlet but English when he goes off-script, tried to get the man to interact with him, with no luck, leading to some yucks. Later, Eidinger tossed a shovel that accidentally bounced off the stage and landed near a woman in the audience. In the middle of his dialogue, Eidinger realized what happened and asked the woman if she was okay. It’s often hard to know what is scripted and when Eidinger is going with his instincts; just wait till you see his fencing battle with Laertes.

Even when he’s not lumbering across the stage (and off it), Hamlet is toying around, as if he has ADHD, banging on the table like a spoiled child and putting silly things on his face. The rest of the cast — Damir Avdic as Horatio and Guildenstern, Konrad Singer as Laertes and Rosencrantz, Robert Beyer as Osric and Polonius, Urs Jucker or Thomas Bading as Claudius and the ghost king, and Jenny König as Gertrude and Ophelia, a pairing that intensifies Hamlet’s cries of incest — is merely in service of Eidinger.

It can be a bit much in the 105-minute first act, which can get so chaotic it loses the narrative thread; if you’re not familiar with the story, you’re unlikely to know what’s going on all the time, especially with the doubling of characters who don’t change costumes. But the show comes together fabulously in the forty-five-minute second act — Eidinger even assures us that it’s much shorter than the first act — as the plot is more apparent and Hamlet (and Eidinger) is somewhat more focused if still as wildly unpredictable. There’s a method to his madness, even if Polonius’s classic pronouncement, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,” has been cut from the production. You also won’t hear anything about a “rogue and peasant slave,” “pernicious woman,” or “damned villain,” but Hamlet will command you to “please switch off your mobile phones!”

Hamlet explains, “It’s all just theater and yet also reality.” Throughout Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet is battling reality, encountering ghosts and interpreting events through his own warped world view. But Ostermeier and Eidinger continually remind us that we are watching theater. And what theater it is, unique, original, flabbergasting, exciting, hilarious, and downright strange.

RICHARD III

Lars Eidinger makes a major announcement as title character in spectacular staging of Richard III at BAM (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
October 11-14, $35-$115, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.schaubuehne.de

Richard III is one of the greatest characters in William Shakespeare’s canon, a hunchbacked purveyor of pure evil as he rises to power in fifteenth-century England. The deliciously maleficent and vengeful egomaniac has been played on stage and screen by a plethora of master thespians, including Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alec Guinness, Peter Dinklage, Mark Rylance, and George C. Scott. But now there’s a new monarch in town, by far and away the best portrayer of the dastardly demon I have ever seen: German actor Lars Eidinger. In Schaubühne Berlin’s ferocious, nonstop version, continuing at the BAM Harvey through October 14 and directed by Thomas Ostermeier (An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, both at BAM), Eidinger is electrifying, literally and figuratively, as the extraordinary last of the Plantagenets. Eidinger speaks most of his dialogue using an old-fashioned bullet microphone that dangles from above, equipped with a light and a camera for extreme close-ups. Eidinger occasionally throws the mic away from him, then grabs it as it circles back in a kind of homage to Roger Daltrey. At one point the night I went, the mic sent out electric shocks right into Eidinger’s face, but he gamely carried on, muttering about “technical difficulties” with a wry smile. Wearing a white T-shirt, black pants and shoes, and a leather-strap helmet, his Richard is part dilapidated Alex from A Clockwork Orange, part steampunk gone wild, in a world of fashionably dressed men and women who, at the beginning, are at a decadent party straight out of a Christian Schad painting. (The fanciful costumes are by Florence von Gerkan.)

Richard (Lars Eidinger) surveys his domain in Thomas Ostermeier’s fast and furious Richard III (photo by Richard Termine)

As he takes care of business with his brothers, Clarence (Christoph Gawenda, also Dorset and Stanley) and Edward (Thomas Bading, also Lord Mayor of London and the Second Murderer), Hastings (Sebastian Schwarz, also Brakenbury and Ratcliff), Buckingham (Moritz Gottwald), Queen Margaret (Robert Beyer, also Catesby and the First Murderer), and Rivers (Laurenz Laufenberg), the hunched, club-footed Richard drags himself around Jan Pappelbaum’s set, which is fronted by a half-circle sandbox, with a two-story metal structure in the back, with poles that characters can slide down. When Richard wonderfully woos Lady Anne (Jenny König), he strips down almost completely, leaving only the black pillow that is fastened to his shoulder to form his hump. (Is it simply Eidinger’s prop, or could it be Richard’s?) Richard also makes his way into the audience several times, grabbing a seat, chatting patrons up, and waking up someone who was dozing off in the front row. He primarily speaks in German, although he ad libs in English, at which points he often looks back at one of the three surtitle screens to see if these words are projected there. He also quotes Tyler, the Creator and raps an Eminem song. But don’t let all of the unpredictable, devilish fun distract you from Richard’s real purpose: systematically dispatching anyone and everyone in his path to the throne, even a couple of puppets. Nils Ostendorf’s loud, furious score is made even more dramatic by Thomas Witte’s live drumming and Sébastien Dupouey’s video projections; Witte sits behind his kit stage left, clearly enjoying Eidinger’s antics. By the time Richard is ready for the final battle scene, there is no one else left onstage; he is fighting himself, as if the whole thing is taking place in his warped, deranged mind. It’s a captivating finale to a rousing version that breathes invigorating life into this always dependable warhorse.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: RICHARD III

Thomas Ostermeier transforms Richard III into a glittery spectacle in German production (photo by Arno Declair)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
October 11-14, $35-$115, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.schaubuehne.de

German director Thomas Ostermeier and Schaubühne Berlin return to BAM with a wildly unpredictable, glittery, contemporary take on William Shakespeare’s paean to power and ego, Richard III, running October 11-14 at the BAM Harvey as part of BAM’s 2017 Next Wave Festival. Last at BAM in 2013 with An Enemy of the People —his previous shows at BAM include Nora in 2004, Hedda Gabler in 2006, and The Marriage of Maria Braun in 2010 — Ostermeier now presents the Bard as if caught up in endless expressionistic glam decadence. Lars Eidinger plays the hunchbacked villain, with Moritz Gottwald as Buckingham, Eva Meckbach as Elizabeth, and Jenny König as Lady Anne. The pulsating soundtrack is by Nils Ostendorf, with songs by Tyler Gregory Okonma, Laurie Anderson, Iannis Xenakis, and Thomas Tomkins and Andrew John Powell; Thomas Witte provides live drumming. The luxuriously gaudy visual style comes courtesy of set designer Jan Pappelbaum, with costumes by Florence von Gerkan, video by Sébastien Dupouey, dramaturgy by Florian Borchmeyer (who adapted An Enemy of the People), and lighting by Erich Schneider. On October 12 at 6:00 ($25) at BAM Rose Cinemas, Ostermeier will sit down for an “Iconic Artist Talk” with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Everybody, An Octoroon), who is adapting Ostermeier and Borchmeyer’s An Enemy of the People for a Broadway run later this season.