Tag Archives: Potomac Theatre Project

SEX, GRIFT, AND DEATH

A group of grifters plans a heist in Caryl Churchill’s Hot Fudge

SEX, GRIFT, AND DEATH
PTP/NYC: Potomac Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West Sixteenth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $21.50-$31.50
ptpnyc.org

The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC) is celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary with two programs running in repertory at Atlantic Stage 2 through the end of July. I saw “Sex, Grift, and Death,” which begins with the New York premiere of Steven Berkoff’s 1983 Lunch and continues with two short works by Caryl Churchill, 1989’s Hot Fudge and the New York premiere of 2015’s Here We Go. The other program, “Reverse Transcription,” consists of Robert Chesley’s 1989 Dog Plays and the world premiere of Jim Petosa and Jonathan Adler’s A Variant Strain, one-act plays that thematically link the AIDS crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

PTP/NYC presented a prerecorded virtual production of Lunch last summer, starring Bill Army as Tom and Jackie Sanders as Mary, two strangers who meet at the beach. They engage in absurdist conversation and share their thoughts directly with the audience as they explore their loneliness and contemplate hooking up. He is a salesman who sells “space, acres of nothing”; she is a married woman who can’t decide whether she minds being bothered by him. Oddly, the forty-minute play, directed by PTP/NYC cofounder Richard Romagnoli with the same cast, lacks the dramatic impact it had online. Mark Evancho’s set features a bench, a garbage can, and a lamppost in front of a screen on which video of a calm shore repeats; the projection, by Courtney Smith, is accompanied by the soft, soothing hums of the sea, courtesy sound designer Sean Doyle.

Jackie Sanders and Bill Army star as two strangers meeting at the beach in Steven Berkoff’s Lunch

“What do you want?” Tom asks. “Nothing,” Mary replies. A moment later he asks, “What were you waiting for?” She answers, “No one — I just like sitting here — alone.” Not giving up, he says, “Don’t you ever want something else?” She insists, “You’re not looking for me — you’re looking for it! Any it.” During the pandemic, we were all waiting, not necessarily sure what we wanted. One thing we did ache for was live, in-person theater; however, this live, in-person Lunch feels strained; it never quite hits its stride, lacking the passion and humor of the virtual edition.

However, things get much better after intermission with a compelling pair of Churchill works, beginning with Hot Fudge. The four-part play follows Ruby (Tara Giordano) as she gathers with friends and lovers (and others) during one long, wild night. First she joins Matt (Gibson Grimm), Sonia (Molly Dorion), Charlie (Chris Marshall), and June (Danielle Skraastad) at 7:00 at a pub, where they are planning a unique series of robberies. “You have to be quite brave to lie so much,” Ruby says at one point, a line that is central to the narrative.

Two hours later Ruby is at a winebar with her stylish new boyfriend, Colin (David Barlow), who appears to be some kind of international businessman, while Ruby has untruthfully told him that she owns a travel agency. Ruby and Colin continue the partying at a club at 11:00 with Hugh (Marshall), Grace (Wynn McClenahan), and Jerry (Teddy Best), where they discuss connections, global industry, ecology, and tennis. The play concludes at 1:00 at Colin’s place, where an unexpected visitor (Skraastad) interrupts the festivities and threatens to uncover some harsh realities they’ve been dancing around all evening.

Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go is a three-part meditation on death

Hot Fudge was originally paired with Churchill’s Ice Cream, but PTP/NYC extremely successfully replaces that with Here We Go, a three-part meditation on death. In the first section, eight characters (Marshall, Skraastad, Army, Sanders, Maggie Connolly, Meili Huang, Annabelle Iredale, Charlie Porto) are at a funeral, talking about the deceased while, one at a time, they take center stage and share how they will depart from this mortal coil. After that, a man (Barlow) delivers a complex monologue, trying to figure out his place in the universe as he realizes, “I’m on my own.” Hot Fudge ends with an ailing man (Barlow) being attended to by a caregiver (Keith) in a harrowing, silent finale that is nearly overwhelmed by an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that questions whether any of us, or all of us, can really exist on our own.

Directed by Cheryl Faraone, who is married to Romagnoli and cofounded PTP with him and playwright-director Jim Petosa in 1987, Hot Fudge and Here We Go flow seamlessly into each other, as if they were meant to be together. They feel tailor made for this precise moment in time, as America is clouded by ever-increasing dishonesty, led by the Big Lie, and the citizenry emerges from two years of a pandemic, reevaluating their lives and careers while dealing with so much death, including more than one million Covid-19 victims in this country alone.

Evancho’s set design consists primarily of a variety of chairs that are moved on- and offstage by the cast after each scene under a shadowy darkness. There’s a lot of sitting and standing, culminating in the poignant finale that puts it all into illuminating, and frightening, perspective.

PTP/NYC has been presenting works by Churchill for nearly thirty years, beginning with The After-Dinner Joke in 1993 (and again in 2002 and 2018) and continuing with Mad Forest in 1998, Serious Money in 2012-13, Vinegar Tom in 2015, and a virtual Far Away in 2020, all directed by Faraone, who knows just what to do with Churchill’s complex dialogue and story lines. The eighty-three-year-old British writer has penned more than fifty plays and radio dramas, so I can’t wait to see what PTP/NYC has in store for us in the future, particularly since the company is reconfiguring its annual format going forward.

PTP/NYC: LUNCH / STANDING ON THE EDGE OF TIME / A SMALL HANDFUL

PTP/NYC’s tasty virtual free Lunch continues through July 13

Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Virtual summer season
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube
When: July 9-13 (Lunch), July 23-27 (Standing on the Edge of Time), August 13-17 (A Small Handful), free with advance RSVP (donations accepted)
Why: Every summer, I look forward to seeing what unique plays Potomac Theatre Project, aka PTP/NYC, brings to the city. Founded in 1987 by co-artistic directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa at Middlebury College, the organization presents old and new works by such playwrights as Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter, Snoo Wilson, Tom Stoppard, C. P. Taylor, and, primarily, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. The company’s 2020 season ran online in the fall, with Churchill’s Far Away, Dan O’Brien’s The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, and Barker’s A Political Statement in the Form of Hysteria. The 2021 season is virtual as well, opening July 9-13 with a splendid production of Steven Berkoff’s Lunch.

“What do you want?” pushy salesman Tom (Bill Army) asks Mary (Jackie Sanders). “Nothing,” she replies. The two are sitting on the edge of a moving sea, their backs to the ocean as dark clouds emerge behind them. Refusing to give up, he later asks, “Don’t you ever want something else?” She responds again, “Nothing.” She tries to leave several times, but he insists she stay.

During the forty-minute absurdist play, the two strangers wonder about a romantic rendezvous as they defend their lives and the choices they’ve made while attacking the other’s, at times hitting hard and deep, although not much seems to stick. She calls him a “salesman of nothing, a canine groper . . . a dirty little man,” while he tells her, “Crawling words creep out like spiders from your ancient gob.” Occasionally they speak directly to the viewer, considering their situation, not sure what they should do next. It might not be love at first sight for both of them, but neither can they simply get up and walk away, allowing us to eavesdrop on their unusual conversation, with unique language that the closed captioning often has no idea how to transcribe.

“You sound like high-pressure hissing from cracked pipes,” Mary says as he waxes poetic about his job. “I’m no pressure,” he replies. “I dissolve into fat and slide under the door, staining the concrete stairs on the way down — those thousands of white — dirty — grey concrete stairs that have gnawed my feet away — choked on the dust — white dust that concrete secretes — salesman’s disease — bang-bang, up the stairs and then slither down in a visceral pool of grease dragging nerve endings, plasma, and intestines . . . re-form on the pavement — plunge the eyes back in — the shirt has dissolved into my flesh — become an outer skin . . . recoup in the ABC — salesman’s filling station — pump in the hot brown bird vomit — and the others are just sludging in, their faces slapped puce with rejection, the waitress, sliding around the dead pool of grease, slithers her knotted varicosity towards me and for a treat smashes some aerated bread down my throat which dissolves into dust, white dust that concrete secretes, atrophying delicate nasal membranes . . .” She asks, “Don’t you like your work?” He answers, “Love it! Every moment, every earth-shattering cosmological moment of it.”

Directed by Romagnoli, the prerecorded play was filmed with the actors in different locations, but Courtney Smith’s production design, lighting, and cinematography attempt to make it appear like they are in the same space. Army (The Band’s Visit, Scenes from an Execution) and Sanders (The Taming of the Shrew, Cowgirls) are lovely together — er, well, apart — in a work that premiered at the King’s Head in London in 1983, with Linda Marlowe and Ian Hastings starring. Berkoff, who has played villains in such films as Beverly Hills Cop, Octopussy, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, has also written and directed such plays as East, West, Decadence, Kvetch, Actor, and Massage, many of which he appeared in as well. Lunch, which runs about as long as it takes to eat lunch, is a tasty treat, a delicious morsel about two very different people who come together by chance and reevaluate their lives as they reaffirm their identities.

PTP/NYC’s free 34.5 season continues July 23-27 with the ninety-minute Standing on the Edge of Time, consisting of short works by David Auburn, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Steven Dykes and others, directed by Faraone and featuring such company vets as Alex Draper, Tara Giordano, Stephanie Janssen, Christopher Marshall, and Aubrey Dube, followed August 13-17 with A Small Handful, a filmed thirty-minute piece directed and conceived by Petosa that uses text by Anne Sexton and songs by composer Gilda Lyons, spoken by Paula Langton and sung by Kayleigh Riess.

PTP/NYC VIRTUAL FALL SEASON

PTP/NYC’s Julius Caesar will start streaming on September 24 and features a female and nonbinary cast from Middlebury College

Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Zoom plays
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube channel
When: Thursday, September 24, October 1, October 8, October 15, free (donations accepted), 7:30 (each show streams through the following Sunday)
Why: Every summer we look forward to the arrival of PTP/NYC (the Potomac Theatre Project) at the Atlantic’s Stage 2 in Chelsea. For thirty-three years, the troupe has been presenting works in Maryland and New York and at Middlebury College, where it was founded in 1987 by Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa. The company specializes in revivals of shows by the inimitable Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker as well as Anthony Minghella, Sarah Kane, Neal Bell, Snoo Wilson, Harold Pinter, Vaclav Havel, Tom Stoppard, and others. But because of the pandemic lockdown, PTP/NYC’s thirty-fourth repertory season is going virtual, running online September 24 through October 18, with a new Zoom show streaming every Thursday night at 7:30 on YouTube and available for viewing through the following Sunday. The season begins September 24 with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Faraone and featuring a female and nonbinary cast from Middlebury College: Em Ballou, Ellie Bavier, Becca Berlind, Olivia Blackmer, Nuasheen Chowdhury, Catie Clark, Maggie Connolly, Molly Dorion, Meili Hwang, Charlotte Katz, Wengel Kifle, Emily Ma, Peyton Mader, Gabi Martin, Sara Massey, Wynn McClenahan, Madison Middleton, Gabby Valdivieso, and Daphne West.

On October 1, PTP/NYC will stage Barker’s Don’t Exaggerate (desire and abuse), directed by Romagnoli and starring Robert Emmet Lunney as a WWI soldier who comes back from the dead. On October 8, Dan O’Brien’s intimate The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage will be performed by O’Brien and Alex Draper, directed by Christian Parker. And on October 15, PTP/NYC revives Churchill’s Far Away, directed by Faraone — who previously helmed the British playwright’s Serious Money, The After-Dinner Joke, Vinegar Tom, and Top Girls for PTP — with Ro Boddie, Nesba Crenshaw, Caitlin Duffy, and Lilah May Pfeiffer. “These four plays, stretching across centuries, wholly different in form, structure, and plot, are nonetheless alike in distrust of structures both public and private, mordant humor, and at times a chilling view of the world we inhabit,” the company said in a statement. “This season recalls a founding tenet of the company — to present work which reflects ‘the nightmares and hoaxes by which we live.’” Tickets are free but donations to PTP/NYC are accepted, with ten percent going to the National Black Theatre.

DOGG’S HAMLET, CAHOOT’S MACBETH

Three schoolchildren get ready to perform Hamlet in PTP/NYC revival of Tom Stoppard two-act play (photo by Stan Barouh)

PTP/NYC: Potomac Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 4, $22.50-$37.50
ptpnyc.org

To Shakespeare newbies — or even longtime Bard fans — Willie B.’s works can feel like they’re written in a different language, with unique rhythms and phrasings and complex plots that can be difficult to unravel. Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard (née Tomas Straussler) first tackled Shakespeare in 1966’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which gave new life to a pair of minor characters from Hamlet. In act two, the Player tells Guildenstern, “You understand, we are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.” Stoppard takes that idea to a whole new level in Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, two Shakespearean romps, meant to be performed together, currently being revived by PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project) at Atlantic Stage 2 through August 4.

In Dogg’s Hamlet, inspired by a section of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Ed Berman’s Dogg’s Troupe, a children’s school is preparing for a fifteen-minute version of Hamlet, but they speak in Dogg, an alternate language in which English words mean something else. “Undertake sun hollyhocks frankly sun pelican crash?” Baker (Connor Wright) asks as he and two other students sit down to have lunch. “Hollyhocks? Nit!” Abel (Zach Varicchione) replies. Baker: “Squire!” Abel: “Afternoons!” Baker: “Afternoons! Phew — cycle racks hardly butter fag ends.” Charlie (Madeleine Russell): “Fag ends likely butter consequential.” Abel: “Very true.” Thus, the audience has to use its linguistic skills to untangle meaning, much like a newcomer to Shakespeare. (In the published version of the play, Stoppard does translate Dogg, so, for example, “Very true” means “Needs salt.”)

When truck driver Easy (Matthew Ball) arrives to deliver the props for the play, he and the students have trouble communicating, because Easy doesn’t speak Dogg, and the students don’t know English. The props are tossed around to form walls of blocks that spell out such phrases as “Maths Old Egg,” which confuse Easy but infuriate the headmaster, Dogg (Peter Schmitz), because they form gibberish (doggerel?). Shakespeare to the students is like Dogg to the audience; the students perform the brief Hamlet in its original language, even though they don’t understand the words. But context is everything, and we all learn to figure it out. Or we don’t. PTP/NYC, which combines experienced actors with young apprentices, doesn’t quite get hold of Dogg’s Hamlet until nearer the end of its forty-five minutes; it mostly comes off as too silly, with haphazard slapstick comedy and uneven performances, although Ball is terrific as Easy, essentially a stand-in for the audience, trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

An inspector (Tara Giordano) interrupts an illegal house performance of Shakespeare in Tom Stoppard’s Cahoot’s Macbeth (photo by Stan Barouh)

Director Cheryl Faraone, the cast, and Stoppard fare much better in the fifty-five-minute Cahoot’s Macbeth, which the three-time Tony-winning playwright dedicates to Czech playwright Pavel Kohout, who staged shows in living rooms in the 1970s when the government banned them from theaters during “normalization.” A society woman (Lucy Van Atta) is hosting a truncated version of the Scottish play in her home, starring actors Pavel Landovsky (Christopher Marshall) as Macbeth and Cahoot (Christo Grabowski) as Banquo. Audience members are her invited guests to watch this illegal gathering. Everything is going along fine until a siren is heard offstage and an inspector (Tara Giordano) enters, stopping the proceedings. She has come both to bury the show and to praise it.

She is enamored of Landovsky and the actress playing Lady Macbeth (Denise Cormier) but raves about their past performances away from the theater, in their day jobs, singling out Landovsky hawking papers at a newsstand and the woman working as a waitress. When Macduff (Will Koch) comes in and recites his lines, the investigator declares, “What’s your problem, sunshine? Don’t tell me you found a corpse — I come here to be taken out of myself, not to be shown a reflection of the banality of my own life,” echoing the audience’s feelings about the intrusion of the investigator herself. She’s also well aware of Cahoot, who she refers to as a “social parasite and slanderer of the state.” After Cahoot acts like a dog (barking is yet another language, in this case one that also evokes the previous act), the inspector leaves, only to come back later, joining Easy, who has a delivery to make and now speaks only Dogg. The wordplay explodes in cunning yet hysterical ways as the madcap story reaches its conclusion.

Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth lasted less than a month when it debuted on Broadway in 1979, and it’s easy to see why: It’s a strange exercise in the language of theater and authority and how the two tend not to mix well under authoritarian leadership. There’s a Monty Python–like quality to some of the humor — the British comedy troupe often had people in power (police, censors, government officials) interrupting skits, and PTP/NYC’s (Scenes from an Execution, The Possibilities / The After-Dinner Joke) version of Dogg’s Hamlet even includes a snippet of MP’s television theme music, which is actually John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” — but where the first play is inconsistent and scattershot, the second play flows much more smoothly in Faraone’s hands. Perhaps it’s the political aspects of Stoppard’s attack on Czechoslovakia’s suppression of freedom that has the cast — which also features Olivia Christie, Emily Ma, and Katie Marshall as three young, attractive witches (and, later, three murderers), Schmitz as King Duncan, and Varicchione as Malcolm — and the crew at the top of their game. It’s delightfully fun, like doing a crossword puzzle but not in your native tongue; you’re not going to get it all, but it’s cool trying. Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth is playing in repertory with Havel: The Passion of Thought, consisting of works by Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and former Czech dissident and president Vaclav Havel, who Stoppard was greatly impressed by and met with in 1977.

THE POSSIBILITIES / THE AFTER-DINNER JOKE

Judith (Kathleen Wise) assures a woman (Eliza Renner) that she is fine as a servant (Marianne Tatum) looks on in Howard Barker play (photo by Stan Barouh)

PTP/NYC: Potomac Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 5, $22.50-$37.50
ptpnyc.org

The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP) continues its long association with the work of prolific contemporary British playwrights Howard Barker and Caryl Churchill with a fast-paced evening of unique tales continuing at Atlantic Stage 2 through August 5. First up are four parts of Barker’s 1986 decalogue, The Possibilities, prime examples of his self-described “Theatre of Catastrophe.” The quartet, set in different time periods in an almost alternate reality, explores the power and morality of the state and the state’s control of its citizenry. In The Unforeseen Consequences of a Patriotic Act, a well-dressed woman (Eliza Renner) wants Judith (Kathleen Wise) to return to the city and take a victory lap a year after cutting off the head of Holofernes and several months after giving birth to their child. In Reasons for the Fall of Emperors, Alexander of Russia (Jonathan Tindle) shudders at the cries of his soldiers being tortured and killed outside as he prepares for bed. After dismissing his loyal officer (Adam Milano), he engages in a complex conversation with a wise peasant (Christopher Marshall) who is shining his boots. “Do you not love the Emperor?” Alexander asks. “It is impossible not to love him!” the peasant responds, rather unconvincingly.

An old lady (Marianne Tatum) isn’t sure she wants to sell a book to a man (Adam Milano) in Only Some Can Take the Strain (photo by Stan Barouh)

In Only Some Can Take the Strain, a government functionary (Renner) tells a bedraggled homeless woman (Marianne Tatum) that she cannot sell books out of a grocery cart; meanwhile a man (Milano) lurks about, desperate to buy an important volume. “Our arteries are clogged with anxiety, our lungs are corroded with fumes,” the lady says. “What a conspiracy and nobody knows but me.” And in She Sees the Argument But, a female official (Wise) attempts to shame a young woman (Madeleine Russell) for wearing high heels and a dress that exposes her ankles. “I don’t ask you to admire my legs,” the confident woman says. “The party executives do that.” PTP co-artistic director Richard Romagnoli adds excerpts from three Barker poems, “Don’t Exaggerate,” “Plevna,” and “Refuse to Dance,” to link the four short plays, which are performed on Hallie Zieselman’s purposely cluttered set, the props for each section waiting in the back to be brought forward when it’s their turn.

Selby (Tara Giordano) wants to save the world, confusing Mr. Price (Jonathan Tindle) and her direct superior, Dent (Kathleen Wise) (photo by Stan Barouh)

After intermission, the company digs into Churchill’s 1978 television play, The After-Dinner Joke, which consists of sixty-six scenes whirling by in an hour. “I admired two extremes on TV, extreme naturalism and extreme non-naturalism — I went for the second,” Churchill wrote about the piece, and that’s just how PTP co-artistic director Cheryl Faraone lets it unfold on Zieselman’s ever-changing, low-budget set. A large roster of characters take on the politics of charity and the charity of politics, as well as big business and religion, centered by the story of a bright, ambitious woman named Selby (Tara Giordano) who has decided to resign from her job as a personal secretary to a sales manager at a bedding store because she is not helping society. The owner, Mr. Price (Tindle), a tycoon who also has launderettes, Chinese restaurants, and factories, tells Selby, “I give employment. I provide services. I pay taxes. I make profits,” to which Selby replies, “Children are dying, sir.” Price asks, “Are you a Christian?” to which Selby answers, “Not anymore. But I feel just as guilty as if I was. And so should you.” Price opts to keep Selby on as a campaign organizer for his five charities, and off she goes, meeting a wide variety of people as she seeks to rid the world of poverty and starvation.

Selby (Tara Giordano) can’t believe what she sees in revival of Caryl Churchill play (photo by Stan Barouh)

She encounters a snake-obsessed mayor (Marshall) who tells her, “A charity is by definition nonpolitical. Politics is by definition uncharitable”; a trio of councilors who are getting hit with pies in the face to raise money; a mysterious thief (Christo Grabowski) in black who keeps popping up and stealing things; a rock star (Grabowski) who has found Jesus (and ten-year-olds); a recipe-loving local celebrity (Lucy Van Atta); a snooty country clubber (Milano) who wants to give charity only to himself; an oil sheik who considers buying Marks and Spencer; and a mother (Russell) who is forcing her son (Noah Liebmiller) to go on a fundraising walk. “If they want to give money, I don’t see why they can’t just give it,” the boy says. “I don’t see why I have to walk round and round the park all afternoon.” Some of the scenes are previously filmed and projected on a screen, which allows quick set changes to be made while channeling a little bit of Monty Pythonesque humor. The play, which is set in the 1970s, takes on added relevance just as the Institute of Economic Affairs in England is being investigated for possible abuse of the necessary separation between charity and politics. “Charity Commission rules state that ‘an organization will not be charitable if its purposes are political.’ How much more political can you get?” George Monbiot writes in the Guardian after exposing several questionable connections. Now in its thirty-second season, PTP, which in 2015 at Atlantic Stage 2 presented Barker’s Scenes from an Execution and Churchill’s Vinegar Tom in repertory, prefers to stage productions of challenging, unconventional, experimental plays, and they have come up with a pair of fine choices yet again.

SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION

Carpeta (David Barlow) and Galactia (Jan Maxwell) battle over love and art in Howard Barker revival (photo by Stan Barouh)

Potomac Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 9, $35
ptpnyc.org

If Jan Maxwell is indeed retiring from the stage, as she recently told Timeout, she has chosen quite an exit. The five-time Tony nominee is revisiting her widely acclaimed role as Venetian painter Galactia in the Potomac Theatre Project’s revival of Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, which the company first performed at the same venue, Atlantic Stage 2, in 2008, earning Maxwell a Drama Desk nomination. Maxwell gives a swirling, emotional whirlwind of a performance as Galactia, a stubborn, nasty, extremely candid, deeply sensual, and, in her own way, highly virtuous painter (inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi) who has been commissioned by the doge of Venice, Urgentino (Alex Draper), and Cardinal Ostensible (Steven Dykes) to paint a major mural glorifying the city’s victory in the Battle of Lepanto. She uses people to achieve her lofty artistic goals, whether it’s a war veteran with a crossbow bolt stuck in his head (Dykes again) or her lover, married religious painter Carpeta (David Barlow). She does not want to be treated differently because of her gender; “Try not to think of me as a woman,” she says early on. “Think of me as a painter.” Although the doge sees this as a chance for Galactia to gain wealth and fame — “You have not been asked to paint the back wall of the vicarage,” he tells her. “I am saying that a canvas which is one hundred feet long is not a painting, it is a public event” — but she is determined to show the true cost of war, the violence, the brutality, the death. However, Carpeta argues that there is something that will always be lacking in her work. “I don’t think you have pity, so you can’t paint it,” he says to her. “Ah. Now you’re being spiteful,” she responds to her lover, who replies, “No. You are violent, so you can paint violence. You are furious, so you can paint fury. And contempt, you can paint that. Oh, yes, you can paint contempt. But you aren’t great enough for pity.” Galactia rejects that idea, saying, “Pity’s got nothing to do with greatness. It’s surrender, the surrender of passion, or the passion of surrender. It is capitulating to what is.” As she continues the mural, refusing to listen to the doge, who wants his brother, Admiral Suffici (Bill Army), to be portrayed more heroically, she is threatened with severe retribution, which she welcomes with open arms.

Jan Maxwell states her case in farewell performance (photo by Stan Barouh)

Originally written as a radio play for the BBC in 1984 starring Glenda Jackson as Galactia (Jackson and Fiona Shaw have also played the role onstage), Scenes from an Execution is a powerful story of identity and control told as a fight between an artist and the ruling elite over history and legacy. Maxwell immerses herself so much into the role that it feels like magic; when Galactia defends her right as a woman to do anything and say anything that a man can, and to create art without being judged because of her gender, it’s as if Maxwell is making one last stand for her own career, which will turn to film and television once the show closes on August 9. She huffs around Hallie Zieselman’s spare set, which features scaffolding in the back, ranting about her age, her body, and her looks, but Maxwell infuses Galactia with a youthful beauty and energy that is as intoxicating as it is mesmerizing, no matter how self-deprecating it becomes. Barker, whose Judith is running in repertory with Scenes, manages to avoid clichés and never devolves into self-congratulatory pedantic speechifying, even getting away with such character names as Urgentino, Suffici, Sordo, Lasagna, and Ostensible as well as Supporta and Dementia, Galactia’s daughters (played by Lana Meyer and Melissa MacDonald, respectively). Director Richard Romagnoli occasionally freeze-frames the action, as if the audience is suddenly looking at a painting; however, whenever Galactia or Carpeta are hard at work, sketching or painting, they are only mimicking, pretending to move their brushes over a nonexistent canvas or draw on a sheet of paper that remains blank. “Look, her sketchbook on the floor, hot with smudges and corrections,” Urgentino says to art critic Gina Rivera (Pamela J. Gray), pointing at an empty page. “Look! Touch it!” But there’s nothing to touch. Painting, like theater, is to be experienced with different senses, requiring something else from the viewer. “I believe in observation, but to observation you must lend imagination,” Galactia says. Imagination plays a central role in Scenes from an Execution, which also deserves nods for Mark Evancho’s lighting and Cormac Bluestone’s lighting. It’s quite a grand farewell for Maxwell; without trying to be clichéd or pedantic, it will be difficult to imagine New York theater without her.