Tag Archives: Mainstage Theater

NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR HEAT NOR GLOOM WILL KEEP AMAZON FROM THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS

Ani (Deirdre Lovejoy) and Jen (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) go about their jobs in different ways in Sarah Mantell’s latest play (photo by Valerie Terranova)

IN THE AMAZON WAREHOUSE PARKING LOT
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through November 17, $62.50 – $102.50
www.playwrightshorizons.org

The unofficial motto of the US Postal Service is “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The quote was taken from The Persian Wars by Herodotus, who is alternately known as the Father of History and the Father of Lies.

In Sarah Mantell’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize–winning In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, in the aftermath of an unnamed apocalyptic event, there is no more post office, no stores, only a society hanging on by a thread. All that is left are scattered people and — Amazon. Thanks, Jeff Bezos.

The play begins in an Amazon warehouse, where Jen (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) is taking packages off a conveyor belt. She is surprised when a new employee, Ani (Deirdre Lovejoy), shows up to work replacing Chris, the outbound supervisor. We never learn what happened to Chris; in this America, set only one generation in the future, people disappear without explanation.

As Jen places the boxes in vertical metal carts, she calls out the names on their address labels: “Flagstaff, Arizona.” “Carvers, Nevada. Oh that’s good. Wasn’t sure I’d see Nevada again.” “Rutland, New Hampshire.” “Greensboro, that’s a good one too. Haven’t gotten much North Carolina in a while.”

When Ani does not call out the names of the cities where her packages are going, Jen gets upset. “If you don’t read the labels, how will you know what’s going on out there?” she asks. Ani ignores her.

Jen also works shifts with El (Sandra Caldwell), who does call out the addresses. They see a package that seems to be addressed to Ash’s (Tulis McCall) cousin, in Ohio, and they memorize the exact location because writing it down is forbidden; they are subject to random searches by security guards. It slowly becomes evident why the addresses and the existence of other states, cities, and towns are so important.

When they’re not on the line, the crew of seven — Jen, Ani, El, Ash, Horowitz (Barsha), Sara (Ianne Fields Stewart), and Maribel (Pooya Mohseni), all queer women, nonbinary, or trans — gather outside by a highway next to a stunning mountainous landscape. They talk about work, share food, play a game called Werewolf, wonder what their coworkers might have done for a living in the before times, and recall moments from their past, like something as simple as eating an apple; in addition, most of the characters get their own personal monologue.

Jen sums it all up when she says, “Listen. It’s not like I don’t hate it. All the places, the names. All the calculating. On the days I don’t think I can take it anymore, I think about my friends who are searching for people, right? And if those names come by, I try to picture I’m like a waterslide, like it comes through me and I don’t have to hold it. It’ll just get where it’s going ’cuz I’m here?”

A group of queer Amazon workers try to plot their future in Sarah Mantell’s In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot (photo by Valerie Terranova)

Presented in association with Breaking the Binary Theatre, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot paints a bleak portrait of the near-future, run by a corporate monolith where people are merely names on boxes, not individuals with real purpose. There is no communication, no connections; packages revolve on an overhead conveyor belt and are ultimately shipped off to destinations that might barely exist. It’s a world where no one can travel, except from Amazon job to Amazon job; the trucks will roar down that highway by the warehouse, but not the crew, who wonder where their friends and relatives are, whether they are alive or dead. The only thing that matters is that the packages get delivered, but it is never implied what might be in them. What other companies are even out there, still doing business?

Emmie Finckel’s scenic design switches between the packing room and the outside, a melding of utopia and dystopia; neither place offers the staff any sense of freedom. Cha See’s lighting and Sinan Refik Zafar’s sound create an enveloping sense of potential doom that could come at any moment. Mel Ng’s costumes feature the familiar Amazon orange vests, under which the employees wear regular clothing, sometimes with an edge, as with Ash’s T-shirt that depicts gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson. (In the script, Mantell notes, “All of the characters are queer. . . . Jen is androgynous / butch / masc. I think El probably is too. Sara is transfeminine and high femme. At least half the cast should be gender nonconforming. The majority of the cast should be BIPOC — and Jen and Sara must be. Sara is ‘the baby,’ but the others are written to be over fifty. My hope is that these roles become something my generation of actors can age towards, and that by the time they get here, the pool will look very different than it does now.”)

Mantell’s (The Good Guys, Tiny) dialogue is sharp and incisive, and Battat (Problems Between Sisters, Layalina) directs with an astute sure-handedness. The ensemble is outstanding, led by Lavinia Grays (Men on Boats, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play), who is like a stand-in for the audience, wanting to find out more, even if it involves taking risks. If this kind of apocalypse is ever going to happen, this is the group you want to be with. Then again, at that point, it might be too late. Fiddling with her Amazon device, El says, “Sometimes I think if I drop it just right it’ll short circuit and reconnect itself to the world beyond the corporation,” to which Maribel responds, “What world?”

As Herodotus also wrote, “One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out.”

Just like Amazon, in the end, Mantell’s gripping play delivers.

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

TEETH

A group of Promise Keeper Girls vow to remain chaste until marriage in uproarious Teeth (photo by Chelcie Parry)

TEETH
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 28, $125-$145
www.playwrightshorizons.org

As if the world isn’t screwed up enough, now we have to be on the lookout for toothy genitalia.

In the 2013 book The Moral Panics of Sexuality, Michelle Ashley Gohr, in the chapter “Do I Have Something in My Teeth? Vagina Dentata and Its Manifestations within Popular Culture,” writes, “Although it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless tirade of moral and political outrage, corporate greed, sex scandals, gun violence, and more, these societal crises have not simply spontaneously arisen in response to a mere few contemporary problems. Rather, today’s moral panics represent an aggregate of borrowed histories layered on for centuries upon centuries. . . . One well known anxiety, the fear of female sexuality, signifies one such displaced anxiety that has taken a displaced form through the little known yet subtly prevalent myth of vagina dentata. While this myth or its basic retellings may not have an obvious place in everyday language or discourse (and few are aware of the myth’s manifestations in current U.S. culture), it nevertheless functions as a powerful force in contemporary conversations about women’s sexuality and the villainization of female desire.”

Gohr, an Arizona State University librarian and faculty associate, then goes on to discuss Michael Lichtenstein’s 2007 award-winning horror comedy Teeth, in which a teenage virgin finds out the hard way that she has teeth in her vagina.

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs have now adapted the film into the ravenously funny and bloody musical Teeth, continuing at Playwrights Horizons through April 28.

The story takes place in the present day in New Testament Village, where Pastor Bill O’Keefe (Steven Pasquale) runs a congregation of high school students called Promise Keeper Girls, who have vowed to remain chaste until marriage, along with several celibate boys. In his opening livestreamed homily about Adam and Eve and the serpent and the apple, he declares, “Woman? Where is your fig leaf? Woman? Where is your shame? I’m gonna ask that again! WOMAN? WHERE IS YOUR FIG LEAF? WOMAN? WHERE IS YOUR SHAME?!?”

He is decrying Amy Sue Pearson, a pregnant teenager he says “let the Enemy corrupt her mind!” He has charged his cultlike team of followers with the responsibility of “carrying the banner for an especially awesome message of female empowerment through sexual purity!,” but he feels they have failed their mission by not protecting Amy Sue. He rails against the boys and the girls, warning them that the same thing better not happen to them. Promise Keeper Girls leader Dawn, the pastor’s stepdaughter, falls right in line, declaring, “I say Promise Keeper Girls can’t be about feeling good! I say Promise Keeper Girls have to be about being good!!!”

A trio of Truthseekers vow to fight for masculinity in horror comedy musical at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Chelcie Parry)

Dawn and the other PKGs, Becky (Courtney Bassett), Fiona (Phoenix Best), Trisha (Jenna Rose Husli), Rachael (Lexi Rhoades), Stephanie (Wren Rivera), and Keke (Helen J Shen) assure Pastor Bill that they will not allow any boy to pound their precious gift, and Tobey (Jason Gotay) and Ryan (Jared Loftin) swear they will do no pounding. But Brad (Will Connolly), the pastor’s son, is having none of it. A shy, withdrawn gamer, Brad thinks the church is a sham. He turns instead to a secret group known as the Truthseekers, led by a mysterious disembodied voice called Godfather, as if the exact opposite of the pastor.

“There’s a pain all men carry, Truthseekers,” Godfather says to Brad and a pair of fellow Truthseekers (Gotay and Loftin) wearing black VR headsets. “Some of us carry it in our shoulders. Some in our stomachs. Some of us even carry it in our balls — in our nutsacks. It’s a pain we’ve become numb to in this era of ‘dismantling the patriarchy.’ An era where our every word is ‘mansplaining.’ An era where any male who expresses sexual desire gets labeled a predator or an ‘incel.’ We can’t even sit on a bloody train without being ‘manspreaders’ for Christ’s sakes! Because we take up too much space!” Godfather proclaims that their enemy is the feminocracy — but to learn how to fight back, the trio must access Truthseeker Premium.

As Brad delves further into the Truthseekers and Dawn and Tobey consider going all the way, the battle lines are drawn and blood is spilled from the hungry choppers that inhabit Dawn’s yearning vulva.

Pastor Bill O’Keefe (Steven Pasquale) has his hands full as he tries to save teenage girls from being pounded between their thighs (photo by Chelcie Parry)

Jacobs (POP!, Harmony, Kansas) and Jackson (A Strange Loop, White Girl in Danger) collaborated on the terrific book, which pays homage to Little Shop of Horrors — one scene involving a gynecologist (Pasquale) harkens back to Little Shop’s dentist dilemma — while tackling religious obsession, female empowerment, and sexual desire. Jacobs composed the rousing score, which crosses genres, while Jackson wrote the lyrics to such hilarious songs as “Precious Gift,” “Between Her Thighs,” “Modest Is Hottest,” “According to the Wiki,” and “Take Me Down.” Kris Kukul’s expert orchestrations are horror-movie worthy, performed by music director and conductor Patrick Sulken and Randy Cohen on keyboards, John Putnam and Liz Faure on guitar, Steve Count on bass, Melissa Tong on violin, and Marques Walles on drums and percussion.

It’s hard to beat such quatrains as “Press our flesh together / Bless me as her groom / Watch me be reborn as I / Fertilize her womb” and “As promise keeper girls, we’re soldiers in battle / With this ring we sally forth to win the war / His word is very clear, he gave us two choices / Take your pick — are you a virgin or a whore?”

Obie-winning director Sarah Benson (Fairview, In the Blood, Samara) fills nearly every moment with wild and woolly fun, culminating in an orgiastic finale that reverberates throughout the theater. Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography rocks out to Jacobs’s music on Adam Rigg’s two-level set, which always has a cross hanging in the back, often set aglow as if delivering messages from above (and below). Enver Chakartash’s costumes range from hoodies and high school jackets to leather and lace, with prominent heavenly whites and demonic reds. Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier’s lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s sound envelop the audience, while Jeremy Chernick’s tongue-in-cheek special effects up the ante.

The ensemble cast has a field day incorporating tropes from horror films and coming-of-age dramas. The set can barely contain Pasquale (The Light in the Piazza, American Son), who infuses the pastor with otherworldly aspirations. Louis (White Girl in Danger, Soft Power) beautifully plays Dawn, who undergoes quite a metamorphosis, while Connolly (Once, Clueless: The Musical) is wonderfully mopey as the disgruntled Brad.

Jackson, who won the Pulitzer and two Tonys for his first show, the semiautobiographical A Strange Loop, might have slipped a bit with his follow-up, the disjointed and overwrought White Girl in Danger, but he gets right back on track with Teeth, a precious gift with plenty of bite.

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

STEREOPHONIC

Engineers Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler) chew the fat as the band readies to record in David Adjmi’s Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

STEREOPHONIC
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through December 17, sold out
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In many ways, the creation of David Adjmi’s Stereophonic mimics the record that the fictional band is making in the play. Following such well-received works as Elective Affinities, Stunning, The Evildoers, and Marie Antoinette, Adjmi announced to friends and colleagues in 2013 that he was leaving the theater, but he immediately started receiving offers of grants and residencies. A three-year residency at Soho Rep resulted in what would become the widely hailed Stereophonic, which went from a seventy-minute play to a two-act, then three-act, and ultimately four-act, three-hour epic whose premiere was delayed because of the pandemic.

In the play, a successful, unnamed rock band suddenly has an eighteen-month-old song called “Dark Night” rising on the charts and are working on a new one, titled “Bright,” echoing the up-and-down nature of personal and professional partnerships. The band is in a Sausalito recording studio in the summer of 1976 for what was expected to be quick, low-budget sessions that start turning into much more.

The band consists of British bass player Reg (Will Brill), British keyboard player and singer Holly (Juliana Canfield), British drummer Simon (Chris Stack), American guitarist and lead singer Peter (Tom Pecinka), and American singer and tambourine player Diana (Sarah Pidgeon). Reg is getting lost in a haze of booze and coke; Simon, who also serves as manager, is having trouble keeping the beat; Holly, who is married to Reg, is reevaluating her living situation; and the controlling Peter is jealous of his girlfriend, Diana, as she brings another potential hit to the group.

Grover (Eli Gelb), who lied on his resume to get the gig, is the recording engineer, assisted by Charlie (Andrew R. Butler); while Grover, a stoner, is nervous and fidgety, worried that he is in over his head, especially when the discord within the band grows, Charlie is gentle and quiet, preferring to remain in the background, their relationship somewhat recalling that between Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith’s films.

Band and crew members take a much-needed break in three-hour Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

The show unfolds like a cool double, or even triple, LP. Not every play scene / LP song works, but the cast/band are uniformly excellent, as are the engineers/crew (with studio set by David Zinn, costumes by Enver Chakartash, lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Ryan Rumery, and music direction by Justin Craig). The songs, by former Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist and Grammy winner Will Butler, capture the essence of 1970s California rock as the angst increases among the members of the band and they attempt to balance professional and personal success. Director Daniel Aukin helms the play like a star album producer.

Sure, it’s too long at three hours in four parts, the equivalent of a quadruple album. At one point, concerned about the length of the record they’re making and one song in particular, Peter says, “We can’t fit everything. I know no one wants to cut anything and we’ve talked a whole lot about continuity. But I’m sorry. We need to have this conversation. We need to decide what we’re gonna do; we’re four minutes over and it’s not enough for a double album. . . . We need to cut stuff.” Reg asks, “Why can’t we do a double album?”

Younger audience members might not know that on cassettes and LPs, artists were limited to 22.5 minutes per side, and sometimes the songs on the cassette were in a different order than on the record, resulting in a loss of continuity. In addition, listeners had to flip the cassette or album to hear the other side; musicians couldn’t just make an album of any length that could stream online endlessly, complete with the ability to easily skip over songs they might not like.

You can’t do that in the theater. Thus, Stereophonic contains some fluff, repetition, and scenes that don’t seem to fit with the others, but for the most part it’s a fun and poignant behind-the-scenes look at artistic creation, collaboration, ego, and jealousy. We’re all the better with Adjmi deciding not to quit the band/theater; I’m looking forward to the several plays he has coming up, including an exploration, with Lila Neugebauer, of the making of Brian Wilson’s Smile album.

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

THE TREES

Sheila (Crystal Dickinson) and David (Jess Barbagallo) are stuck in a rut in The Trees (photo by Chelcie Parry)

THE TREES
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 19, $46-$76
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In L. Frank Baum’s 1919 book The Magic of Oz, the thirteenth and next-to-last of the illustrated Oz novels, a little girl named Trot and grizzled former sailor Cap’n Bill suddenly get stuck in the ground, and their feet start growing roots. As Baum writes: “This is hard luck,” [Cap’n Bill] declared, in a voice that showed he was uneasy at the discovery. “We’re pris’ners, Trot, on this funny island, an’ I’d like to know how we’re ever goin’ to get loose, so’s we can get home again.”

That’s precisely what happens to Sheila (Crystal Dickinson) and her older brother, David (Jess Barbagallo), near the beginning of Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees, making its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons (coproduced by Page 73) through March 19. It’s also what happens to the play itself, which is stuck in the mud from the get-go.

Sheila and David are both drunk, returning from a party. Instead of going into their house, they gleefully run around the forest until their feet get trapped in large circles and their toes start growing roots. “There’s still so much to do,” David says. “Will anyone notice?” Sheila asks.

People will notice, but there appears to be nothing much they can do about it as life goes on around the siblings, including visits from their Polish grandmother (Danusia Trevino); their longtime friend Charlotte (Becky Yamamoto); David’s boyfriend, Jared (Sean Donovan); Norman (Ray Anthony Thomas), who is caught in some nearby bushes; Saul (Max Gordon Moore), a rabbi from Cleveland; Sheryl (Marcia DeBonis), from the Cleveland congregation Sisterhood; twinks Julian (Nile Harris) and Tavish (Pauli Pontrelli); street vendor Terry (Sam Breslin Wright), who immediately senses opportunity; and, later, a child named Ezra (Xander Fenyes).

Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees takes place in a candy-colored forest (photo by Chelcie Parry)

Among the topics of conversation are capitalism, religion, romance, and loneliness, with hints at environmentalism.

“I think there’s a certain threshold of love one needs to feel in one’s life,” Norman says. “And if you never meet that threshold you continue to be filled with longing. You can keep on — but you’re hungry. And that is me. Slightly hungry. To the bitter end.”

The rabbi admits, “I’ve felt a great sliding in the world. Like we’re all sliding off this planet into somewhere . . . dark and ugly and dead. It seems a little bit like it’s all on autopilot. Like God is off . . . somewhere . . . else. And the plane of the world is off, somehow, and we’re just sliding. . . . And so when I read about you two, it seemed to me like God might have returned. And that this was the hand of God, that rooted you here. That life isn’t the miracle, but staying put. Because if the world were to tilt and the rest of us were to slide, you’d still be right here.”

David and Sheila remain right there as life plods forward, evoking Didi and Gogo in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, but Borinsky (A Song of Songs, Ding Dong It’s the Ocean) is never able to establish much of a story aside from the central idea of two characters in search of an exit. In a “Playwright’s Perspective” program note, she admits, “I’m not great at writing plot. I end up writing logistics. . . . Plots are a bit ridiculous.” Unfortunately, a plot is precisely what The Trees needs, something to be nurtured, that can grow over the course of, in this case, a striking-looking but ultimately aimless 105 minutes. (The fun lighting is by Thomas Dunn, with sound by Tei Blow and puppets by Amanda Villalobos.)

Parker Lutz’s pristine white set is a glistening fairy-tale world with Greek columns, but the narrative is choppy and random. Enver Chakartash’s costumes can get wildly colorful, at times conjuring the rainbow Pride flag, but it’s primarily all for show, with not enough substance. Too often characters come and go without adding much, anecdotes that might be cute but are not critical. Director Tina Satter (Is This a Room, Ghost Rings) can only do so much with her two stars essentially cemented in place, and I’m still trying to figure out why David and Sheila occasionally go down into the ground and then come back up again; it’s a cool effect that does not have any apparent reason, fitting in with the rest of the play.

In Baum’s The Magic of Oz, the Kalidah reflects, “Our own Kalidah King has certain magical powers of his own. Perhaps he knows how to fill up these two holes in my body.” Perhaps he also knows how to fill up the two bodies in holes in The Trees.

DOWNSTATE

Andy (Tim Hopper) and Em (Sally Murphy) have something to say to Fred (Francis Guinan, at left) in Downstate (photo by Joan Marcus)

DOWNSTATE
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $61-$101
www.playwrightshorizons.org

“If you knew in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?” Bee asks Jay in Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram. “What if it turned out to be for the best if we’d never even existed?”

That question is central to Norris’s latest work, Downstate, extended through January 7 at Playwrights Horizons. One of the best plays of the millennium, Downstate takes an unusual angle on child molesters, making us see them as human rather than evil demons, eliciting compassion but not sympathy while delving into the concept of victimhood from all sides.

“I used to fantasize about how I would kill you,” Andy (Tim Hopper, now replaced by Brian Hutchison) tells his abuser, Fred (Francis Guinan), as Andy calmly reads from a reconciliation contract. “I would park outside your apartment and wait until you pulled in the driveway. And I would bring along my mother’s thirty-eight, the one she kept in her bedside table, and when you stepped out of your car I would hold it against your head and duct tape your mouth so I wouldn’t have to listen to any of your toxic bullshit . . . and I’d drive you to the edge of the forest preserve, and you’d kneel down in the dirt . . . and I’d rip the tape off your mouth and jam the barrel of the gun down your throat so that you —” Andy is cut off by several interruptions before accusing Fred of “exploiting my trust. By enlisting my sympathy. But you will never be deserving of sympathy.”

Em (Sally Murphy), Andy’s wife, says to Fred, “How can I ever explain to my child why Daddy is sometimes sad? Why he’d rather sit alone in the dark instead of using the PlayStation? Children need answers. And they need to know that some monsters are real.”

It’s a tough topic to navigate onstage; in recent years, David Harrower’s Blackbird, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, and Jennifer Haley’s The Nether successfully tackled the issue from different angles, but Norris offers several new twists that test the standard dynamic that good and evil are black-and-white.

Four residents of a group home for convicted child molesters meet with parole officer Ivy Delgado (Susanna Guzmán) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Fred is an easygoing old man in a motorized wheelchair who speaks gently; in the script, Norris compares him to Mr. Rogers (whose first name is Fred). Fred was a piano teacher and still has a fondness for Frédéric Chopin, who he is quick to point out led a tragic life after the family of the woman he loved rejected their relationship. All four molesters in the home still believe what they did to their victims was done out of love and understanding, despite what the law and society dictate. Fred has a small keyboard in the living room, where he fake-plays to a CD of Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude, the drip-drip-drip of the music evoking the repetitive nature of the crimes by child abusers who think they are in love.

The home is run by Dee (K. Todd Freeman), an impassioned gay man who does the shopping and tries to keep everyone sane; he’s especially supportive of Fred, although he still angrily defends what he himself did to a teenage boy. Fast-talking, Bible-quoting Gio (Glenn Davis) is the youngest of the four and is facing the shortest sentence; convicted of statutory rape of a girl he thought was “old enough,” he considers himself to be better than the others, not an abuser, and has grand plans for starting his own business. Felix (Eddie Torres) is the quiet one who keeps to himself, although he has a problem with lying, especially to the group’s parole officer, Ivy Delgado (Susanna Guzmán), who lets them all know when they have broken the rules of their closely supervised release. The four men are tracked by ankle monitors and are not allowed to use the internet or a cellphone.

When Ivy announces that the local community has passed rulings further limiting their movement, they are furious, but she points out, “Well, ya know what? Nobody really wants y’all livin’ anywhere, much less in their neighborhood.” Dee says, “Why not put us on a desert island?” Gio suggests, “Y’all oughta be banished from human society.”

Gio works with the pert and cheeky Effie (Gabi Samels), who is not a fan of the police. When she shows up to drive Gio to their job, Ivy asks to see her ID. Effie repeatedly states, “Am I being detained?” Ivy then asks her name, to which Effie replies again and again, “I do not consent to the question.” It’s a comic scene, but it brings to the surface the critical ideas of detention and consent.

Things get even more heated in the second act when Andy returns, with more to say to Fred.

Downstate is brilliantly directed by Tony and Obie winner Pam MacKinnon, who previously helmed Norris’s Tony-, Olivier-, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Clybourne Park and The Qualms (as well as superb Broadway adaptations of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). MacKinnon accounts for every gesture, every interaction, every line of dialogue, making sure each aspect of the story is fully believable, from fighting over the bathroom to bickering over unripe bananas, the latter a reference to children too young for sex; it’s no coincidence that Dee sees no problem with them, telling Gio, who refuses to pay for his share of the bananas because they are too green, “Didn’t want bananas for next week, I wanted bananas for immediate consumption.” Norris and MacKinnon succeed in making the four abusers into a kind of family, with Ivy the de facto parent.

Fred (Francis Guinan) and Dee (K. Todd Freeman) share a rare tender moment in Downstate (photo by Joan Marcus)

Todd Rosenthal’s set is deceptively cozy, a cutaway living room above which is a roof with a satellite dish, emphasizing the limitations of the men’s lives. A flatscreen TV fills the fireplace, blocking the possibility of real warmth. Gio’s exercise equipment is in one corner, in front of Felix’s room, where Felix spends most of the show, behind an accordion door. The window next to the front door is broken, the result of a shotgun blast from an unhappy person in the neighborhood. (The lighting is by Adam Silverman, with sound by Carolyn Downing and costumes by Clint Ramos.)

The cast is exceptional; an ever-present tension hovers over the space as the characters interact as if on the edge of a knife. Guinan (Tribes, The Night Alive) is soft and gentle as Fred, who appears to be tender and harmless, especially in the wheelchair, but he has a dark past. Davis (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, The Christians) is a bundle of nonstop energy as Gio, while Torres, who is primarily a director (Familiar, Water by the Spoonful), makes the most of his few scenes. Two-time Tony nominee and Obie winner Freeman (Airline Highway, Song of Jacob Zulu) is a powder keg as Dee, ready to explode at any moment with the slightest provocation. Samels, in her off-Broadway debut, is electric as Effie, who speaks her mind, not afraid to hang out in a house of sexual predators. At one point she tells Gio, “A workplace is a safe space,” which also reveals a certain naivete.

Hopper (Go Back to Where You Are, More Stately Mansions) is a bundle of nerves as Andy, whose abuse at the hands of Fred has tortured him as he searches desperately for closure, while Murphy (The Minutes, August: Osage County) is forceful and tenacious as Em, who wants her husband to finally be free from pain.

Guzmán (La Luz de un cigarillo, Comida de Puta) is firm and unyielding as Ivy, especially when the concept of victimhood is raised. She tells Felix, “I got forty-seven clients, aright? Forty-seven of y’all I gotta deal with on a weekly basis all shapes and sizes but ya all got one thing in common, okay? Every one of you’s a victim. Everybody’s misunderstood, been done wrong, system’s broke, system ain’t fair blah blah, and that may or may not be the case — but I’ll tell ya something. If y’all feel so victimized? Maybe that gives ya a little idea how ya made other people feel, okay?”

Norris (The Low Road, Domesticated) was inspired to write Downstate by the sociopolitical disconnect between the right and the left in the United States, how the liberals and the conservatives are unable to talk to each other and resolve their differences in any constructive way, instead demonizing the supposed enemy.

The horror of child abuse is one thing that everyone agrees on; in 2019, New York State passed the Child Victims Act, which gave survivors a one-year window to file claims that had been barred by the statute of limitations, leading to approximately ten thousand lawsuits. The vote was 63-0 in the Senate and 130-3 in the Assembly. This past May, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the Adult Survivors Act, which gives survivors who were abused when they were over eighteen a one-year lookback to pursue legal recourse.

In the must-see Downstate, Norris offers a compelling, thought-provoking, and exquisitely rendered exploration of our humanity as a people; it’s about child sexual abuse, justice, and victimhood, but it’s also about so much more.

CORSICANA

Justice (Deirdre O’Connell), Christopher (Will Dagger), and Ginny (Jamie Brewer) watch Mariah Carey in Glitter in Corsicana (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

CORSICANA
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $35-$99
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In her acceptance speech for winning the Tony for Best Actress for her performance in Dana H., Deirdre O’Connell said, “I would love this little prize to be a token for every person who is wondering, ‘Should I be trying to make something that could work on Broadway or that could win me a Tony Award? Or should I be making the weird art that is haunting me, that frightens me, that I don’t know how to make, that I don’t know if anyone in the whole world will understand?’ Please let me standing here be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.”

O’Connell has followed up Dana H., in which she never speaks but instead remarkably conveys a prerecorded true story told by playwright Lucas Hnath’s mother, with Will Arbery’s Corsicana, which has its fair share of weird, starting with the word itself, which is spoken two dozen times by the four characters, each of whom lives in their own reality.

Corsicana takes place in the Texas town named after the island of Corsica. Thirty-three-year-old Christopher (Will Dagger) is a teacher and an aspiring filmmaker who lives with his thirty-four-year-old half sister, Ginny (Jamie Brewer), in the family’s ranch house. They are often visited by the sixtysomething Justice (Deirdre O’Connell), who was best friends with their recently deceased mother.

After her mom’s death, Ginny, who has Down syndrome, is looking for something new to do. She doesn’t want to go back to her job at the nursing home or rejoin the choir because she feels she doesn’t belong. “I’m worried. I can’t find my heart,” she tells her brother.

Ginny had suggested that Ginny meet her friend Lot (Harold Surratt), a sixtysomething reclusive artist and musician who has just been “discovered” via a magazine article; Christopher thinks it might be good for Ginny to write a song with Lot, who previously played an original song for Christopher called “Weird.” (The original music is by singer-songwriter and visual artist Joanna Sternberg.)

A self-taught outsider artist, Lot is a loner who has trouble communicating directly with others, speaking in a sharp, straightforward manner, using few words and prone to non sequiturs; he has no phone or computer. He doesn’t want to interact with either the virtual or real world. And although he believes he may be neurodivergent, he is not about to be a babysitter for a woman with special needs.

Justice (Deirdre O’Connell) pleads with Lot (Harold Surratt) in new Will Arbery play (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

He tells Christopher: “Yeah, I know ‘special needs.’ Why’d you come here? I know the place in the high school. The hallway in the high school. You know I’m not one of them, right?” Christopher replies, “What?” Lot: “I’m not special needs.” Christopher: “Oh — I didn’t think you were. I assumed the opposite.” Lot: “What’s the opposite? I was only a couple years in that hallway. And they knew I didn’t belong. Got a graduate degree in my forties. So don’t worry about me.” Christopher: “Oh, cool. In what?” Lot: “Experimental mathematics. I proved the existence of God.” Christopher: “Are you serious? Can I see?” Lot: “I threw it away. Art’s a better delivery system.”

Art may be a better delivery system, but Lot prefers not to show anyone his work or exhibit in a gallery, or to even sell it. When Justice, who believes she is being trailed by a ghost, asks to see his latest sculpture, he declares, “No, it’s not ready! You’re not allowed to look back there.” The audience is not allowed to look either; none of Lot’s work is ever revealed. He later compares capitalism and consumption as a “prison . . . a man-made evil.” He also claims that they are all surrounded by dinosaur ghosts.

As the characters continue to interact with one another, Lot is fearful about becoming part of something. “You trying to get me to believe in community?” he asks Justice, who replies, “No. I have no agenda.” Lot: “Uh-huh.” Justice: “What do you have against community?” Lot: “I don’t have to have all the same opinions as you,” as if choosing to spend time with people is an opinion.

But he does find common ground with Ginny, explaining that the two of them are “so complicated, people don’t want to think about it. So they make us more simple. In their brains. They don’t think about it, and they call us simple. And everything is about our needs. All our little needs. Our special needs. Everyone around us becoming burdened by our constant need. And if there’s something that we want? Well, it’s for them to decide if we really need it.”

Over the course of the play, all the characters find some form of commonality with the others while also maintaining barriers, particularly when it comes to physical contact of any kind. “People have to understand touch, and ask for permission, and respect boundaries,” Ginny tells Lot. “Touch can cause problems.”

Obie- and Tony-winning director Sam Gold, who has helmed such marvelously inventive productions as Fun Home, John, and A Doll’s House, Part 2 in addition to critically lambasted versions of King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, injects Corsicana with, well, a weird edge throughout. Laura Jellinek and Cate McCrea’s stage consists of a pair of rotating brown couches set against a white backdrop and ceiling, but Justice and Lot spend time sitting on the floor. Often, when two characters are interacting, one or both of the other actors watch from the far corners. Several times, two of the actors push poles to move part of the set toward the audience in order to change Isabella Byrd’s canopy lighting. Meanwhile, the long, horizontal, slanted back white wall serves as the entrance to Lot’s studio, which he often locks to keep people out of his space — and head.

Christopher (Will Dagger) and Ginny (Jamie Brewer) seek connections in Corsicana (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

There is a lot of repetition in the play, which could use a significant amount of trimming from its two-and-a-half-hour length (including intermission). The terrific cast is led by Surratt’s (Familiar, Serious Money) powerful performance as the antisocial Lot — evoking the biblical figure who lived in Sodom, “a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day” — primarily standing stiffly upright when talking as he, Justice, Christopher, and Ginny form a kind of found family. Arbery (Pulitzer finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Plano), who is from Texas and Wyoming, based Christopher and Ginny on himself and one of his seven sisters, who has Down syndrome. He also knows about unique families, having served as executive consultant on the third season of Succession.

Brewer (American Horror Story, Amy and the Orphans) brings an unfettered honesty to Ginny, Dagger (Among the Dead, The Antelope Party) is appropriately offbeat as Christopher, and O’Connell (Circle Mirror Transformation, In the Wake) is just the right kind of quirky as the, um, weird Justice, who is writing a book that echoes the subject of Arbery’s play. She explains to Christopher:

“Well, it’s about anarchism and gifts. About the belief that humans are fundamentally generous, or at least cooperative. That in our hearts, most of us really do want the good. It’s about the evils of centralized power, specially in a country as massive as the USA, let alone a state as big as Texas. It’s about an unforgiving land. It’s about unrealized utopias. It’s about how failing is the point. It’s about surrender. It’s about small groups. It’s about community. It’s about the right to well-being. It’s about family. It’s about the dead. It’s about ghosts. It’s about gentle chaos. It’s about contracts of the heart. And the belief that when a part of the self is given away, is surrendered to the needs of a particular time, in a particular place, then community forms. From the ghosts of the parts of ourselves we’ve given away. A new particular body. Born of our own ghosts. I don’t know. It’s about Texas.”

And there’s nothing weird about that. (Is there?)

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Five friends get ready for a wedding in world premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Joan Marcus)

WISH YOU WERE HERE
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 5, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

First-generation Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi follows up her wonderful professional debut, English, which ran earlier this year at the Atlantic, with the even better Wish You Were Here, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons.

Written in 2018 as her NYU thesis in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies, English is set in a TOEFL classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where four Iranian adults are learning to speak English as they and their teacher question the meaning of home and how language and culture impact their identity.

Written in 2019 as a response to Trump’s threat to retaliate against Iran after the Western Asian republic shot down an unmanned US drone, Wish You Were Here follows the trials and tribulations of five close female friends in Karaj from 1978 to 1991 who experience what Toossi calls “detached homesickness” as the nation goes through major changes, from the Islamic Revolution to the Iran-Iraq War.

The story unfolds in ten scenes that all take place in the same well-accoutred living room. Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is in a giant wedding gown, getting ready for her special day. Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) is giving Zari (Nikki Massoud) a pedicure, announcing so everyone can hear, “Your toes are disgusting.” (There are a lot of bare feet throughout the play.) Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) makes adjustments to the dress while flirting with Rana (Nazanin Nour), who is très elegant in her shiny silk pajamas, smoking a cigarette as she does Salme’s hair.

As they continue to primp, they regale one another with a string of hysterical dirty jokes and good-natured insults. “I’m steaming out of my dress, Shideh,” Nazanin says, referring to her nether regions. “Ew,” Shideh replies. “My pussy could iron a shirt,” Nazanin adds. Rana asks, “Oh what kind of shirt?”

Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) has a lot to say as Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) applies makeup to Zari (Nikki Massoud) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) hovers behind them (photo by Joan Marcus)

“If a man saw her toes, I think his penis would fall off,” Shideh says about Zari. Rana admits, “Silk does not breathe well. Whatever you’re smelling is me and I don’t want to talk about it.” And Zari advises Salme what to do when encountering a man’s member: “When you first see one, smile. Smile so big. Smile bigger than you’ve ever smiled in your life. Like you need to swallow a plate.”

It’s an enchanting scene in which we fall in love with the characters while learning key facts about each of them: Shideh is studying to be a doctor and is considering going to school in America; Salme is the most religious one, regularly praying, believing that you “can’t jinx G-d’s will”; the easygoing Zari is in the market for a husband; and the ultracool Rana and the occasionally mean Nazanin plan to avoid marriage and children, although Nazanin lets it be known that she wants to eventually return to Iran after living it up in Miami. (Coincidentally, in English, Neshat plays a teacher who made a life for her and her family in London but came back to Karaj, perhaps regretting that decision.)

A year later it is Zari who is getting married, but a pall is cast over the proceedings when Shideh mentions Rana’s name; Rana, who is Jewish, has gone missing, along with her parents and brother. Salme is trying to find her, but Nazanin says, as if trying to convince herself, “If she wanted to vanish into thin air, with no trace, no word, without shit, then that’s how she wanted to do it.”

Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) cement a bond in Wish You Were Here (photo by Joan Marcus)

But as we soon discover, Nazanin has a problem with people leaving, whether it’s a friend moving away with a new husband, another friend going off to study abroad, or a best friend disappearing in a country becoming ever-more dangerous. As many Iranians choose to escape their homeland because of war and an oppressive regime, Nazanin feels stuck, resenting those who attempt to make a new life for themselves and their family instead of getting out while she still can. It’s a bitter pill, especially when seen in retrospect. “Why don’t I want to leave?” she wonders. It’s a question people ask themselves every day across the globe.

Wish You Were Here is directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Animal, The Year of Magical Thinking) with a warm and welcoming intimacy that invites us into these women’s complex lives with, as the characters often say, “no judging.” The comforting set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, with handsome costumes by Sarah Laux, subtle lighting by Reza Behjat, and meticulous sound by Sinan Refik Zafar and Brian Hickey.

The hundred-minute play was also written by Toossi as a love letter to her mother and her mother’s friends, immigrants who started all over in the United States; parts of the story are based on real experiences. Toossi, who was born and raised in Orange County, California, and is now based in Brooklyn, has beautifully depicted the ups and downs, the sheer joys and the petty jealousies, that define female friendship.

Over the course of thirteen years, Iran underwent tremendous change, but Toossi does not focus so much on world events as on how they impact the women’s relationships with each other; the scenes involving only two of the women at a time are particularly emotional and heart-wrenching as Toossi explores the many layers of attachment, mere cordiality, and sincere love the women share. While Salme is afraid of pulling off the tape when Nazanin is waxing her legs for fear of hurting her physically, Zari is not afraid to tell Nazanin, “You have a way of making me feel really lonely.”

The cast is exceptional; it truly does seem like you’re watching five friends go about their daily existence, dealing with love and loss as they dance wildly to a song on the radio, hide under a table during a bombing, kneel down to pray to Mecca, or deliver yet another pussy joke. In between scenes, the actors make minor changes to the living room to indicate a shift in location, moving around tables or opening the curtain in the back to reveal a bright garden. It’s as if the five actors, and the audience, need a short break from the intensity of the play while getting ready to see what the next year holds in store for everyone. I can’t wait to see what Toossi has in store for all of us next.