Tag Archives: Lincoln Center Theater

THE COAST STARLIGHT

TJ (Will Harrison) and Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) consider what might be in The Coast Starlight (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

THE COAST STARLIGHT
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through April 16, $103
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Sliding Doors meets Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight, making its New York City debut through April 16 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

The ninety-five-minute play takes place on board the Coast Starlight, a real Amtrak train that travels from Los Angeles to Seattle in thirty-six hours. The premise is wholly relatable: Various individuals get on the train and sit in the same car, where they wonder about the identity of their fellow travelers and consider what might happen if they engaged one another in conversation. Who hasn’t been on a train, bus, or plane and thought about who was sitting nearby, thinking about who they might be and maybe even saying hello.

“One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off,” Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) says in Citizen Kane. “A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.” There’s an inherent sadness in every fleeting glimpse we humans have of each other, that maybe life would have turned out differently if we had made a different choice in that instant.

For years, Missed Connections listings have appeared, first in newspapers and magazines, now online, from people who saw a stranger somewhere, regret not having introduced themselves, and are now trying to find that person. It was captured beautifully in Adrian Tomine’s November 8, 2004, New Yorker cover depicting a young man and a young woman in aligning subway trains, both reading the same book, looking at each other as if they understand they were meant to be together but might never get the chance.

Characters engage in imaginary conversations in moving play at Lincoln Center (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

In The Coast Starlight, the half dozen characters are all heading somewhere, but it’s not necessarily where they want to be going, and their inner and outer journeys could potentially be changed if only they had said something. “It’s an awful thing to feel like you don’t have a home,” Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) says about halfway through.

TJ (Will Harrison) is a navy medic about to go AWOL to avoid being sent back to Afghanistan. Jane is an aspiring animator visiting her boyfriend who she may not love anymore. Noah (Rhys Coiro) is a veteran and a drifter caring for his ailing mother. Liz (Mia Barron) is a loud, lively woman who has just ditched her lover at an Extraordinary Couples Workshop. Ed (Jon Norman Schneider) is a harried, drunk traveling salesman working for a questionable invention company. And Anna (Michelle Wilson) is a married mother who has just had to identify the body of her dead brother.

The play is primarily a series of imaginary conversations, as if the characters decided to speak to one another, sharing intimate details of who they are and what they want out of their daily existence.

“I wanted to lean across the aisle and say to her: I have no idea where I’m headed today — I just decided I’d get on a train and head north,” TJ says about Jane, who responds to the audience, “If he’d told me that, I’m not sure what I would’ve said. TJ: “Then I wanted to tell her: I’ve lived in California for a year and till this morning I’ve never been north of San Diego.” Jane: “And then I probably would’ve said: Well, I’ve never been to San Diego.” TJ: “You should definitely go sometime. It’s totally weird.”

“I wanted to tell all of you: Obviously I’m nowhere near the person I intended to be,” Ed says. “But I’m the only person I can be under the circumstances. I know how shitty today was and I hold no illusions about tomorrow.”

These six diverse people are not having their best day, and they have no idea what the future has in store for them. They are lost souls contemplating what happens next, not necessarily looking forward to it. Worried that he’s going to be caught and brought back to face justice for military desertion, TJ says, “Then I remembered nobody could be looking for me because I wasn’t missing yet.”

A whirlwind conclusion brings it all into perspective, focusing on the concept of “What if?”

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set is a rotating platform with six movable train seats. Daniel Kluger’s sound, Lap Chi Chu’s lighting, and Ben Pearcy’s projections (for 59 Productions) makes the audience feel that they’re also on the train, motoring north through gorgeous scenery, although only flashes of light and color stream by. Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s everyday-dress costumes help give identity to the characters.

Directed by Tyne Rafaeli (Epiphany, I Was Most Alive with You), the play occasionally gets lost itself, the dialogue running off the rails; it’s not clear why the stage spins or why the actors continually rearrange their seats, and Kluger’s interstitial music is too standard.

Harrison (Daisy Jones and the Six) is affecting in his off Broadway debut, speaking in a manner that emphasizes how unanchored TJ is. Canó-Flaviá (Dance Nation, Mac Beth) is warm and gentle as Jane, Coiro (Dinner at Eight, Boy’s Life) is compelling as the unpredictable Noah, and Barron (Dying for It, Domesticated) nearly rips the roof off the Newhouse in her entrance scene, screaming into her cellphone as if no one else is around. Wilson (Confederates, Sweat) is touching as Anna, while Schneider (Once Upon a [korean] Time, Awake and Sing!) does his best with a character who is more tangential, not as deeply nuanced.

At one point Jane imagines telling TJ about James Turrell’s Dividing the Light Skyspace at Pomona College. She explains, “The artist who made it, he believes that the sky is way too enormous for us to really comprehend it. So he builds these little rooms all over the world with holes cut in their ceilings so you can look up at the sky like it’s a picture in a frame. It’s so much cooler than I’m making it sound. I promise you’ll never look at the sky the same way again.”

It’s an apt metaphor for the Coast Starlight, both the train and the play. (Notably, Pearcy was an assistant to Turrell for ten years.) I’ve been on long train rides, and I’ve sat several times in Turrell’s first US Skyspace, Meeting, which is on permanent view at MoMA PS1. I’m not sure that, having seen Bunin’s show, I will be more amenable to engage strangers in conversation, but I’m likely to wonder a whole lot more about who they might be.

MIKE BIRBIGLIA: THE OLD MAN & THE POOL

Mike Birbiglia discusses mortality with a smile in The Old Man & the Pool (photo by Emilio Madrid)

MIKE BIRBIGLIA: THE OLD MAN AND THE POOL
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 15, $104-$268
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

I remember being home sick one day in fourth grade, when I was ten, grabbing a relatively short book from my parents’ library, and reading it straight through in bed. It was the first real novel I ever picked up, called The Old Man and the Sea, by a man named Ernest Hemingway, about a fisherman facing his own mortality as he desperately tries to reel in a marlin in a life-or-death struggle, for both him and his catch. I can still feel myself turning the pages, the excitement building moment to moment.

The title, and the theme of mortality, is the jumping-off point of Mike Birbiglia’s latest one-man show, the deeply personal and extremely funny The Old Man & the Pool, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through January 15. In such past solo works as The New One, Thank God for Jokes, and Sleepwalk with Me, the Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based comedian and This American Life contributor has documented his REM sleep behavior disorder, his sex life, trying to conceive, and the power of jokes themselves. “There are details in my life that are both setups and punchlines,” he explained in his Broadway debut, The New One, and the same is true once again in The Old Man & the Pool, in which mortality is front and center for seventy-five hysterical, moving minutes.

The show begins with Birbiglia describing his 2017 annual physical, “which I always dread because I have a lot of preexisting conditions, which I call ‘conditions’ because everything is existing if it does and everything is ‘pre’ unless it happened on the way to the appointment. When I see that checklist I circle the whole thing and cross out ‘pregnant.’” When he has trouble blowing into a tube for a pulmonary test, his doctor tells him that based on those results, he might be having a heart attack right then and there. “I call it ‘the birthday cake test,’” Birbiglia tells the audience, “because it sort of tells you how many birthday cakes . . . you have left.” Shortly after that, the doctor tells Birbiglia that he has type two diabetes.

At the time, Birbiglia was forty-four, married to Jenny (who he calls Chlo for no apparent reason), and raising their three-year-old daughter, Oona. Both his father and his paternal grandfather had heart attacks at fifty-six. “I’ve always thought I should just set aside that whole year when I turn fifty-six and get an airbnb by the hospital and keep a flexible schedule,” he says. I understand exactly where he’s coming from; my father died of a heart attack at forty-seven, his father at fifty-seven. Those kinds of facts tend to weigh heavily on your mind.

Mike Birbiglia surfs through a serious diagnosis in latest Broadway solo show (photo by Emilio Madrid)

It’s one of the many reasons why Birbiglia’s shows work so well. He’s a kind of everyman, sharing his foibles with a genuine self-deprecation and easygoing relatability. It pains him that he was raised in a family that would say “Take care” instead of “I love you.” He also tends to come down with extreme medical conditions that are fascinating to hear about. He has to sleep in a special sleeping bag and wear mittens so his sleepwalking doesn’t result in accidentally causing harm to himself, his wife, or his daughter. In The New One, he details undergoing a varicocele repair that makes every male in the audience wince and cringe. He survived bladder cancer. And now, he’s fighting off diabetes and a potential heart attack.

He’s told that he has to start doing cardio five days a week. “I don’t think anybody does cardio five days a week,” he tells his doctor, who replies, “A lot of people do cardio five days a week.” The doctor suggests he swims at the YMCA, which brings up a poignant and profound memory for Birbiglia in which, at the age of seven, he decided he would never again go to a YMCA pool. But the thought of leaving Oona fatherless overwhelms him, and the exercise regime begins as he strives to improve his health, even if it involves changing his diet and swimming laps five days a week. It evokes Santiago, the old man in Hemingway’s story, thinking to himself, “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” Similarly, Birbiglia asks, “Why do we not do the thing we know we should be doing?”

Mike Birbiglia takes it easy while considering death in The Old Man & the Pool (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Birbiglia, who also wrote, directed, and starred in the films Don’t Think Twice and Sleepwalk with Me, is immensely personable and self-effacing, telling his tale in a laid-back, even-tempered manner. He picks up the sole prop, a stool, and walks around the stage with it, occasionally sitting on it. He relaxes on the floor, lays down, and works off the energy of the audience. The night I went, a handful of people came in late, including a woman in the front row. Birbiglia, who was laying on his side at the time, welcomed them and decided to get them up to speed by giving them a quick, unscripted summary of what they missed. It was a brilliant moment, and one that quickly sealed the bond between us and him.

Beowulf Boritt’s set is sparse but effective: a concave board that mimics both a giant wave in its shape and a swimming pool in its gridlike design of blue squares. At times Birbiglia appears to surf under it, while at other times it looks like it is going to envelop him, drowning him. He wears jeans, comfy shoes, and an untucked blue-and-white button-down shirt that echoes the backdrop; the costume is by Toni-Leslie James, with lighting by Aaron Copp, projections by Hana S. Kim, and sound by Kai Harada, all helping develop a warm intimacy. Birbiglia’s longtime director, Seth Barrish, knows just how to keep it all moving forward as Birbiglia heads off on hilarious digressions about wrestling, mold, sugar fries, and signs such as “Slippery When Wet” and “No Breath Holding.”

The show begins and ends with the propulsive song “Red Hearse” by the LA band Red Hearse, in which Jack Antonoff, Sam Dew, and Sounwave promise, “I’ll be better than I was before / A natural, all of the past out the door / I never let you go, was all at our knees before / It’s gettin’ deeper, we’re caught up in the undertow / So come on / And if you can’t hold me / I’ll dive in it headfirst / I’ll die ridin’ in a red hearse.” In The Old Man & the Pool, master storyteller Birbiglia guides the audience through the undertow, emerging safely, and happily, from the abyss.

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

Thornton Wilder looks at the history of the world through the Antrobus family in The Skin of Our Teeth (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through May 29, $49-$225
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

“The theatric invention must tirelessly transform every fragment of dialogue into a stylization surprising, comic, violent, or picturesque,” Thornton Wilder wrote about his Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Skin of Our Teeth in a 1940 notebook. Over the years, many productions have attempted to capture that spirit, with varying degrees of success. In 2017, TFANA staged an exemplary version under Arin Arbus’s direction, almost making sense of Wilder’s complex story involving the Antrobus family — their name means “human” — who have experienced it all but keep on keeping on, as if it’s all in a day’s work.

Mr. Antrobus (James Vincent Meredith) is the inventor of the multiplication table, the alphabet, and the wheel. He’s been married to Mrs. Antrobus (Roslyn Ruff) for five thousand years, and they have two children, Gladys (Paige Gilbert) and Henry (Julian Robertson). Their maid, Sabina (Gabby Beans), runs the household and lets the audience know just what she’s thinking, breaking the fourth wall not only as Sabina but as the actress portraying her. “I hate this play and every word in it,” she tells us. “Besides, the author hasn’t made up his silly mind as to whether we’re all living back in caves or in 1950s Jersey, and that’s the way it is all the way through.”

Massive sets dominate Lincoln Center revival of The Skin of Our Teeth (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Over the course of three acts and nearly three hours, they are surrounded by melting polar ice caps, a raging war, a refugee crisis, a coming flood, and other key moments of world history. The setting shifts from their suburban home in Excelsior, New Jersey, to the bustling Atlantic City boardwalk. Large-scale pet dinosaurs enter their living room and walk around. A fortune-teller (Priscilla Lopez) offers a stern warning. Sabina flirts with Mr. Antrobus. Everyone worries when he’s not home from work one night. Sitcom meets disaster movie with biblical implications in a choppy narrative that has been significantly tweaked by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Everybody, An Octoroon), adding modern-day Black references that often feel out of place alongside old-fashioned newsreels. It’s all too much of a good thing.

Adam Rigg’s set is endlessly imaginative and often awe-inspiring, but at times you’ll find yourself distracted by it. The dinosaur puppets stay onstage too long. Sabina’s complaints grow tiresome and repetitive. Immensely talented Obie-winning director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Fefu and Her Friends, Marys Seacole) has overstuffed the show; it ends up working best in the third act, when the pace slows down and we get into the heart of the play. Wilder invited surprise, but too many surprises can get overwhelming; sometimes it really is best to stop and smell the roses, thorns and all.

INTIMATE APPAREL

Esther Mills (Kearstin Piper Brown) checks out special fabric saved for her by Mr. Marks (Arnold Livingston Geis) in Intimate Apparel (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

INTIMATE APPAREL
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $92
212-362-7600
www.lct.org/shows

It takes a special kind of play to become a special kind of opera, but that is just what has happened with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse through March 6. The original play debuted at Baltimore’s Center Stage in 2003 and moved the next year to the Roundabout, winning numerous Drama Desk, Obie, Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortel awards.

The new show is a profound transformation, part of the Met/LCT Opera/Musical Theater Commissioning project, the first-ever collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater. It began at the Met in 2014 with Nico Muhly and Craig Lucas’s Two Boys and was followed last year by Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Intimate Apparel features a lovely score by Ricky Ian Gordon and a superb libretto by Nottage that deals with race, class, misogyny, and poverty.

The poignant drama takes place in Lower Manhattan in 1905, where Esther Mills (Kearstin Piper Brown), the daughter of slaves, toils as a seamstress, saving up to someday open her own salon; she has amassed a small fortune, $1700, over seventeen years. At thirty-five, she worries that she is a spinster who will never find true love. She makes clothes for a wealthy white woman, Mrs. Van Buren (Naomi Louisa O’Connell), and lives in a boardinghouse run by Mrs. Dickson (Adrienne Danrich), an older Black widow who feels successful whenever one of her residents leaves to get married.

She asks, “How many girls have left here? / I can’t count them anymore. / They come as mere babies, / And I teach ’em all I know, / So when they leave, / And leave they must, / They leave here as refined ladies.” At the wedding of one of her residents, Corinna Mae (Jasmine Muhammad), Mrs. Dickson encourages Esther to consider Mr. Charles (Errin Duane Brooks) as a potential match, but she’s having none of it. “He been comin’ to these parties for two years, / And if he ain’t met a woman, / It ain’t a woman he after, I fears,” Esther answers. “Pride’ll leave you lonely,” Mrs. Dickson reasons. But Esther doesn’t believe in romance. “Love!? / I hate that word! / Love doesn’t come to no featherless bird. / Love is a music that I never heard,” she opines.

Esther is shocked to learn that George Armstrong (Justin Austin), a Barbadian working on the Panama Canal, has heard about her from the deacon’s son at her church and wants to correspond with her. Esther can’t read or write, but she begins an epistolary relationship with George with the help of Mrs. Van Buren.

Esther occasionally goes to the fabric seller, Mr. Marks (Arnold Livingston Geis), an Orthodox Jew who saves special bolts of cloth for her. There is obvious electricity between them, but when Esther puts her hand on him affectionately, he pulls away. “The color won’t rub off on you!” she declares angrily. Mr. Marks explains that his religion forbids him from touching any woman who isn’t his wife.

When George finally arrives in New York, he and Esther wed, but married life is not a bed of roses for her, as George seems to prefer hanging out with Mayme (Krysty Swann) in a saloon and not working. He wants to buy a dozen draft horses from a guy in the bar, but he needs Esther’s cash to make the purchase. Mayme, who gets her sexy outfits from Esther, dreams of being a pianist performing at Carnegie Hall. “We all wishing on something,” she says. “I smash all social rules. / ’Cause no one does it for us.” It’s not long before Esther, who has never been one to smash social rules, finds herself reevaluating what, and who, she wants in life.

Beautifully directed by Tony winner Bartlett Sher (My Fair Lady, South Pacific), Intimate Apparel is an intimate sung-through chamber opera that feels right at home at the Newhouse. The music is performed by two pianists, associate conductor Nathaniel LaNasa and Brent Funderburk, facing each other on high platforms, with the words projected onto the walls (along with archival footage and photographs from the early 1900s). Gordon, whose previous opera adaptations include The Grapes of Wrath, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the just-concluded Yiddish version of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, has created a moving score that floats through the theater.

Things get intimate at opera adaptation of Lynn Nottage play (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Michael Yeargan’s spare set is centered by a circular wooden floor that rotates, with standing doors, a sewing machine, beds, and other pieces of furniture whisked on and off between scenes, blending in with Dianne McIntyre’s choreography. Catherine Zuber’s period costumes range from ravishing to appropriately dour; Esther sews daring outfits for others but allows herself only boring frocks.

The narrative was inspired by Nottage’s great-grandmother, who was a seamstress, and was written shortly after the death of Nottage’s mother; several characters feel imbued with a haunting loneliness. It also is a sharp representation of the immigrant experience, as men and women with roots from Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa try to make lives of their own in difficult times, lacking the opportunities available to wealthier white families.

Piper Brown, who has appeared is such operas as Aida, La Traviata, and Carmen and such musicals as Ragtime and Caroline, or Change, has the acting chops to match her wonderful voice. Her expressive eyes and movement display how tired and beat down Esther is, wanting desperately to believe in herself without having to rely on anyone else, especially a man. (Chabrelle Williams performs the role at Wednesday and Saturday matinees.) The rest of the cast, which also includes Tesia Kwarteng, Anna Laurenzo, Barrington Lee, Indra Thomas, and Jorell Williams, is exemplary.

With this new version of Intimate Apparel, Nottage again proves that she is one of America’s most talented and important writers. She has explored the human condition, often through the lens of race, class, and socioeconomic injustice, in such stalwart works as Sweat, Ruined, Mlima’s Tale, and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, compiling a kind of American quilt of powerful stories that has reached yet another level.

TALES FROM THE WINGS: A LINCOLN CENTER THEATER CELEBRATION!

Who: Jordan Donica, Rosemary Harris, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Ruthie Ann Miles, Seth Numrich, Steven Pasquale, Paulo Szot, Ayad Akhtar, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Bartlett Sher
What: Benefit fundraiser for Lincoln Center Theater
Where: Lincoln Center Theater YouTube
When: Thursday, May 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 (available through May 17)
Why: With arts venues opening up across the city this summer and fall, Lincoln Center Theater takes a look back and ahead in its virtual fundraiser “Tales from the Wings.” Premiering on YouTube on May 13 at 7:00, the show will feature appearances by Jordan Donica, Rosemary Harris, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Ruthie Ann Miles, Seth Numrich, Steven Pasquale, Paulo Szot, Ayad Akhtar, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Bartlett Sher sharing stories about working at the Vivian Beaumont, the Mitzi E. Newhouse, and the Claire Tow. The evening will also include excerpts from previous productions and a sneak peek at the upcoming 2021-22 season. The benefit will be available on demand through May 17; admission is free, although donations are welcome.

GREATER CLEMENTS

Joe (Edmund Donovan) takes issue with his mother (Judith Ivey) in Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through January 19, $92
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Samuel D. Hunter takes a sharp snapshot of a downtrodden America in the poignant drama Greater Clements, which ends its run at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on Sunday. The play is set in Hunter’s home state of Idaho, the site of many of his works (A Bright New Boise, Lewiston/Clarkston). It’s 2017, and Greater Clements is at the end of the line; the Dodson Mine suffered a horrific tragedy in 1972 and shut down in 2005, and now there’s a referendum to abolish the town as a civic entity, at least in part as a reaction to the flood of wealthy Californians moving in. Maggie (Judith Ivey), who owns the local mine museum, is closing up shop; she has just brought her mentally ill twenty-seven-year-old son, Joe (Edmund Donovan), back from a stint in Anchorage, where he went to get away from some trouble he caused but did not necessarily fully understand. Maggie is visited by her high school flame, the gentle and stoic Japanese-American Billy (Ken Narasaki), and his adventurous fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Kel (Haley Sakamoto); Maggie, who is divorced, and Billy, who is widowed, flirt around with the idea of perhaps getting back together. Meanwhile, Maggie’s friend and employee, Livvy (Nina Hellman), is leading the charge for the town to remain incorporated, and Wayne (Andrew Garman), the police chief, is keeping a close watch on Joe, who appears to have potentially dangerous tendencies.

Kel (Haley Sakamoto) tries to befriend Joe (Edmund Donovan) in Greater Clements (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Shrewdly and discerningly directed by Hunter’s longtime collaborator, Davis McCallum (Stupid Fucking Bird, London Wall), the nearly three-hour Greater Clements explores a wide range of issues, from Japanese internment camps and cancer to mental illness and gentrification, from corporate insensitivity and greed to fear and, perhaps most pointedly, loneliness. Dane Laffrey’s potent, active set, which includes a small part of the audience seated in a corner section virtually amid the action, features a second level that descends from above; unfortunately, the construction requires numerous poles that will occasionally block some of your view as the setting changes from the mine and the museum to a bedroom and living room. Yi Zhao’s lighting is supremely effective in the scenes that take place in the mine itself, putting us inside the dark underbelly of America. Tony and Obie winner Ivey (Steaming, Hurlyburly) is exquisite as Maggie, bringing an intimate, realistic warmth to a stalwart woman who deserves better out of life, but Donovan (Lewiston/Clarkston; Xander Xyst, Dragon: 1) steals the show with his powerful, in-your-face portrayal of a man all-too-aware of his situation but not necessarily capable of controlling it.

THE ROLLING STONE

The Rolling Stone explores the horrific treatment of homosexuals in Uganda (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 25, $92
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

“No news is good news,” Joe (James Udom) says near the beginning of Chris Urch’s wrenching drama The Rolling Stone, which continues at the Mitzi E. Newhouse through August 25. The play is named after a short-lived paper in Kampala, Uganda, which in 2010 outed LGBTQ people, identifying them so that they would then be arrested, beaten, and/or murdered. A gutsy James Udom is Joe, a priest waiting to hear if he will be named pastor of his local church, which is filled with gossipers; he lives with his younger siblings, Dembe (Ato Blankson-Wood) and Wummie (Latoya Edwards), who are both preparing for admission exams that will allow them to attend medical school in London. In the wake of their father’s recent death, leaving them orphans, all three must make sacrifices. Joe gets the job, but he is beholden to church leader Mama (Myra Lucretia Taylor), who has her own agenda. Dembe, who has been expected to marry Mama’s daughter, Naome (Adenike Thomas) — who mysteriously hasn’t uttered a sound in six months — is hiding his relationship with Sam (Robert Gilbert), a doctor whose father is Irish and mother Ugandan. And Wummie is forced to work as a cleaning woman when it turns out their father did not leave behind the money they thought and Joe, who is fiercely antigay, decides that only Dembe can go to London. But as news and gossip spread about the gay outings, the siblings clash with one another as well as the church.

Naome (Adenike Thomas) and Dembe (Ato Blankson-Wood) hope for a brighter future in The Rolling Stone at Lincoln Center (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The horrific treatment of the LGBTQ community in Uganda has been well documented, in such films as Call Me Kuchu and the recent uproar over a fundraising campaign to open the country’s first LGBTQ center, which has been denounced by the government. The Rolling Stone focuses on the relationship between Dembe and Sam, which is problematic in that Blankson-Wood and Gilbert lack the chemistry necessary to lift the drama. The play works much better when director Saheem Ali (Fireflies, Nollywood Dreams) turns his attention on the siblings, especially once Wummie discovers Dembe’s secret, which she knows would turn Joe violently against him. Meanwhile, Naome’s silence is representative of the terror and hypocrisy experienced by Ugandans every day. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set consists of a wavy, weblike curtain in the back and a rectangular gray block that rises from below the stage to serve alternately as a rowboat, a bed, and a bench. “I hear two arrests have already been made,” Mama says, referring to another outing in the newspaper. “Not that I say anything. It’s not my place to say. I just humbly hope and pray. Pray for every living soul need prayer now.” But in a society where people are expected to turn in their brothers and sons, praying that homosexuals be harshly dealt with, there is little hope until systemic changes are made.