Tag Archives: Saheem Ali

GOOD BONES AND FIRM FOUNDATIONS ON AND OFF BROADWAY

Mamoudou Athie, Susan Kelechi Watson, and Khris Davis star in Good Bones at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

GOOD BONES
Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through October 27, $95
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

According to the Canadian website houseful, “‘Good bones’ refers to the core foundational elements of the home — a steady structure that can withstand time, wear, and elements. A home with good bones typically has a sturdy foundation, structural stability, and a strong roof. A well-staged home can hide imperfections with beautiful rugs, a fresh coat of paint, or features that pull your attention.”

Four current plays that take place primarily in a home struggle with the core foundational elements, with varying results.

Playwright James Ijames and director Saheem Ali follow up their Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, which ran at the Public’s Anspacher Theater before transferring to Broadway, with Good Bones, continuing at the Public’s Martinson Hall through October 27. Maruti Evans’s set is a skeletal house surrounded by plastic, undergoing renovation in an unidentified American city that itself is experiencing controversial gentrification.

Travis (Mamoudou Athie), who comes from money, and Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), who grew up in the projects, are a married couple who have moved back to her neighborhood and are considering having a baby. He is a chef preparing to open a restaurant, and she is working on a new sports complex she believes will vastly improve the community. Their contractor, Earl (Khris Davis), flirts with Aisha, who returns the interest, but when she shares the plans for the complex with him, he sees her as a traitor to her roots.

She explains, “We’re calling it the Jewel. It’s going to be kind of like a little village over there. This neighborhood has been abandoned to decay and atrophy. The Jewel will bring together the best of the old and the new. Will there be change? Yes. But change is the only thing consistent in this life. We have been sowing into this community. We have worked diligently to revitalize this neglected corner of the city. We’re changing this neighborhood for the better.” His quick response: “It’s the death star.”

James Ijames’s Good Bones is in need of further renovation (photo by Joan Marcus)

Remembering how he used to play in the very house he is now working in, Earl tells Aisha, “These houses are sturdy. Shit’s built like a ribcage. The bones are so good. If . . . uh . . . you sit really still in here, you can feel the walls breathing and the floors lifting to meet your feet. That’s why I love these old houses. I get to spend time in a lot of haunted places.”

Good Bones follows in the lofty footsteps of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, but it lacks the character development and depth of those two award-winning works. Watson (Eureka Day, Merry Wives) and Athie (The Mystery of Love and Sex) have little chemistry; it might be the relationship between Travis and Aisha that requires renovating, but it’s hard to root for them because their marriage has no firm foundation.

Davis (Fireflies, Sweat) steals the show as the honest, hardworking, well-meaning contractor who has a more realistic view of the world, the only one who can see the ghost in the machine, and Téa Guarino (A Hundred Words for Snow, Antony and Cleopatra) is charming as his daughter, Carmen. But Good Bones needs more work, more than just a fresh coat of paint.

Kate Mulgrew outshines the material in Nancy Harris’s The Beacon at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE BEACON
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 3, $60-$125
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

Obie winner and Emmy nominee Kate Mulgrew excels as an Irish abstract painter renovating her seaside home in Nancy Harris’s The Beacon, making its North American premiere at the Irish Rep through November 3. Mulgrew is Beiv (rhymes with gave), who is transforming her late husband’s cottage into a glass-enclosed space, as if she has nothing to hide — it has been long rumored that she might have had something to do with her spouse’s death.

She is surprised when her son, Colm (Zach Appelman), arrives with his new wife, Bonnie (Ayana Workman), who is a big fan of hers. Colm is surprised when he finds out that one of his old friends, Donal (Sean Bell), is helping with the renovation and has grown close to Beiv, who Colm always calls by her name, never “mom” or “mother.”

At the back of the room is Beiv’s most recent canvas, which is not quite finished yet. Examining it, Bonnie says, “You can really see the female rage. Like I’m instantly getting menstrual blood, the blood of childbirth, genital mutilation, hemorrhaging — pretty much all female suffering. Abortion is in there obviously . . . and repression and shame. But there’s also something really — tender too. Like there, in those softer shades, I see the vulva. And the clitoris, and this really female desire for pleasure, for sexual intimacy but also for like a really fucking explosive orgasm, you know. But yeah. No, it’s powerful. And brutal. And sad too.”

Beiv’s quick response: “It’s a blood orange.”

Of course, it’s actually something in between, and that “in between” is where the play, directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull, find itself stuck, unable to escape from its own trappings.

The Beacon is in need of more structure at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Beiv is a complex and fascinating character, superbly portrayed by Mulgrew (The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Tea at Five) with a compelling thread of intrigue. But when she’s not onstage, the narrative drags with didactic dialogue and meandering subplots, some of which feel completely unnecessary, such as the one involving Ray (David Mattar Merten) and Bonnie, although Ray overdramatizes things when he describes the house: “On one hand it looks like an idyllic little artist’s garret. Half-finished charcoal sketches sit scattered on a table. A large oil painting rests on an easel; there’s a huge glass window with sweeping views of the Atlantic. But the crack in the window from a recent break-in suggests another story. A darker story . . . a story of sex and violence and betrayal that’s hung around this cottage for over a decade.”

As always at the Irish Rep, the set, in this case by Colm McNally, is an impressive structure, but the story does not have the requisite good bones. It’s as if Harris and Borrull (Little Gem, Bedbound) knew where they wanted to end up but threw in too much as they get there.

Even the title is wasted on an unimaginative metaphor. Mulgrew herself is a beacon, but alas, in this production, she’s the only one who shines.

Martha Pichey’s Ashes & Ink trap the actors and characters in uncomfortable ways (photo by Thomas Mundell, Mundell Modern Pixels)

ASHES & INK
AMT Theater
354 West Forty-Fifth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 3, $39-$49
ashesink.ludus.com
www.amttheater.org

“‘Structure.’ Our lives need structure,” Molly (Kathryn Erbe) says early in the New York premiere of Martha Pichey’s Ashes & Ink. It’s a word that’s repeated several times in the play, which itself needs considerable rebuilding.

Running at the AMT Theater through November 3, Ashes & Ink moves between Molly’s apartment in New York City and her boyfriend Leo’s home in the country. Molly is a widow with a vast archive of birdsong she’s recorded and is categorizing with her sister, Bree (Tamara Flannagan); Molly’s teenage son, Quinn (Julian Shatkin), is an addict who has been in and out of rehab and is seeking a career in acting after having made an impact in a few movies. Leo is a widower raising his eight-year-old son, Felix (Rhylee Watson), by himself.

Quinn has once again left rehab, a place called Serenity House, so he can rehearse for his audition to get into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Prepared to do a monologue from Richard II — his father’s name was Richard — he instead does the classic, and obvious, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy from MacBeth. The most important phrase is “signifying nothing,” to which he adds, “Nothing. Not a fucking thing.” That goes for the play as well, echoed later by Molly, who opines, “I am so deep inside my sucked dry bones sick and tired. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t even know how to think anymore. I can’t remember anything.”

Tim McMath’s set switches from Molly’s cramped apartment, which resembles a psychiatrist’s office, where Quinn often sits in a chair complaining about his life, and the kitchen of Leo’s country house and under a tree on his property. The actors move the sets themselves; the first time they do it is fresh and exciting, but over the course of fifteen scenes, it grows tiresome, dragging down any pace the show is trying to achieve. For some reason, Molly leaves the window over the fire escape wide open, not the safest thing to do, especially when Quinn is running away from trouble.

Stagnantly directed by Alice Jankell, the play — Pichey’s debut — can’t get out of its own way as subplots turn ever-more ludicrous and the holes in the central story keep expanding. And I couldn’t help but cringe when Tony nominee Erbe (Something Clean, The Speed of Darkness, The Father) had to deliver the following lines: “If somebody told me my little boy would grow up to be an addict, I would’ve spat in their face. Aimed right for their mouth. . . . Take the lid off the pressure cooker, Molly! Watch it plaster the walls with all this gummy smelly stuff. Put your nose up to it, take a good whiff of this shit, this mix of ‘Could’ve done this,’ ‘Should’ve known that.’”

Without any kind of firm foundation, Ashes & Ink fails the smell test, among others.

Sisters Gloria (Leanne Best), Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), Jill (Helena Wilson), and Joan (Laura Donnelly) reunite as their mother lies on her deathbed in The Hills of California (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $58-$351
thehillsofcalifornia.com

Rob Howell’s magnificent multilevel set for Jez Butterworth’s new play, The Hills of California, is a character unto itself, an Escher-like maze of rooms and staircases that rise into a mystical darkness. The main floor switches between 1955 and 1976 at a family-run Victorian guesthouse on the outskirts of the seaside resort town of Blackpool on the Irish Sea, providing a firm foundation for the gripping, if overburdened, narrative.

In 1976, sisters Gloria (Leanne Best), Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), and Jill (Helena Wilson) have gathered at the fading Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa because their mother, Veronica Webb, is dying in a room upstairs; they are waiting for their fourth sister, Joan (Laura Donnelly), who has not stepped foot in the house for twenty years, living in America. They are in what once was the private kitchen but is now a tiki bar with a one-armed bandit and broken jukebox that represent the siblings’ once-promising career. Their mother’s nurse, Penny (Ta’Rea Campbell), has offered the sisters the opportunity to bring in a doctor to end Veronica’s pain, but they don’t want to make any critical decisions until Joan arrives, something Gloria believes is highly unlikely.

“Times like these you find out who a body is. But go on. Stick up for her,” Gloria says sharply to Jill, who has spent her life taking care of the guesthouse and Veronica and is sure that Joan is on her way, exclaiming, “Well, I’m sorry. But it’s not Silly Jilly head-in-the-clouds, nor sticking up for no one. I know my sister. If Joan says she’s coming, she’s coming. There. I’ve said it.”

In 1955, single mother Veronica (Donnelly) is training young Gloria (Nancy Allsop), Ruby (Sophia Ally), Jill (Nicola Turner), and Joan (McDonnell) to become the next Andrews Sisters, rehearsing Johnny Mercer’s 1948 hit “The Hills of California,” which features the lines “The hills of California will give ya a start / I guess I better warn ya cuz you’ll lose your heart / You’ll settle down forever and never stray from the view / The hills of California are waiting for you.”

“What is a song?” Veronica asks, answering, “A song is a place to be. Somewhere you can live. And in that place, there are no walls. No boundaries. No locks. No keys. You can go anywhere.” A song is its own kind of structure, its own kind of home, meant to bring people together, but in The Hills of California, it tears a family apart.

Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly) is a controlling British stage mother in Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony winner Butterworth (The River, Jerusalem) and Oscar, Tony, and Olivier-winning director Sam Mendes (The Lehman Trilogy, Cabaret) previously teamed up on The Ferryman, which won four Tonys and boasted an ensemble of nearly three dozen performers including covers. The Hills of California is overstocked with minor male characters who disappear into the woodwork, even Luther St. John (David Wilson Barnes), who is involved in a key scene that influences the girls’ future and their relationship with their mother.

About fifteen minutes have been cut from the original three-hour London production and the early previews on Broadway, leaving some gaps in the narrative, along with several moments that feel extraneous, such as when Veronica forces a lodger (Richard Short) to take the long way home, barring him from the shortcut through the kitchen. But when the story focuses on the mother and her daughters, in both time periods, the play finds its foundation, with sharp, poignant dialogue, lovely music by Nick Powell, and pinpoint choreography by Ellen Kane.

Donnelly, who has appeared in several plays written by Butterworth, her partner (they have two children together), is whip-smart as Veronica, a controlling stage mother who recalls Rose Hovick in Gypsy, currently played by Audra McDonald right next door at the Majestic. (On the other side is another show about a mother and daughter and music, Hell’s Kitchen.)

America is not referenced just in the song; the rooms in the guesthouse are named after such US states as Colorado, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, and Mississippi, where the critical event happens in 1955 and where Veronica is dying in 1976, reminding the audience that this kind of tale can happen anywhere.

In her 2016 poem “Good Bones,” British actress Maggie Smith, who passed away in September at the age of eighty-nine, writes, “Any decent realtor, / walking you through a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.” Even with its occasional skeletal forays, The Hills of California has good bones, filled with a glorious beauty.

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

FAT HAM

Fat Ham reimagines Shakespeare’s Hamlet taking place at a family barbecue (photo by Joan Marcus)

FAT HAM
American Airlines Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $45-$242
212-539-8500
www.fathambroadway.com

Last July I saw James Ijames’s delightfully delicious Fat Ham at the Public Theater. The show has made the smoothest of transitions to Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre, with the same cast, crew, and set. If anything, the play is now even better, nominated for five Tonys, for Best Play, Best Featured Actress, Best Costume Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Direction. Below is an update of my original review, slightly amended to account for the move to the Great White Way, with revised photos and a tiny tweak to the script.

There’s no “To be or not to be” in James Ijames’s rousing, spirited adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Hamlet. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, continuing at the American Airlines Theater through July 2, there’s no “To thine own self be true,” no “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” no “Good-night, sweet prince,” no “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” But to give you the tasty flavor of Ijames’s big queer Black take on the familiar tale, his Hamlet, known as Juicy (Marcel Spears), says, “Ah, there’s the rub” only after Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) shares the secret to smoking pork.

The ninety-five-minute show, coproduced by the National Black Theatre and the Public, takes place in the backyard of, according to the script, “a house in North Carolina. Could also be Virginia, or Maryland or Tennessee. It is not Mississippi, or Alabama or Florida. That’s a different thing all together.” The time is “a kind of liminal space between the past and the present with an aspirational relationship to the future that is contingent to your history living in the south. All that to say . . . I’m writing this play from inside the second decade of the twenty-first century. This world aesthetically sits anywhere in the four to six decades preceding the current moment.”

At its core, the story echoes the original. Juicy’s father, the king (Claudius; Jones), has been murdered by his brother, Rev, who then married his brother’s widow, Tedra (Gertrude; Tony nominee Nikki Crawford). Juicy hangs out with his best friend, Tio (Horatio; Chris Herbie Holland). Everyone assumes that Juicy is destined to wed his supposed true love, Opal (Ophelia; Adrianna Mitchell). Her very protective brother, Larry (Laertes; Calvin Leon Smith), is in the military and suffers from PTSD. Tedra’s best friend, Rabby (Polonius; Benja Kay Thomas), Larry and Opal’s mother, loves drinking and celebrating the Lord.

The play opens with Juicy on the back porch of a suburban home helping prepare for a barbecue party for Rev and Tedra’s bethrothal as Tio watches porn on his phone. “Your daddy ain’t been dead a week and he already Stanley steamering your mom. Cold,” Tio says. “Stanley steamering your mom . . . ,” Juicy quizzically repeats. Tio clarifies, “Eating your momma’s box? Doing the nasty with your mom? That better?” This is not your grandparents’ Hamlet.

Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) leads a prayer before family and friends partake of barbecue in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

A few minutes later, Juicy is visited by the ghost of his father, Pap, dressed in white, eerie smoke drifting around his neck and shoulders. Pap wants his son to avenge his death — and to stop eating candy bars unless he wants to get “the suga,” which runs in the family. Pap orders Juicy to split Rev open: “Make his thighs into hams. His intestines into chitlins. Pickle his feet and boil his head down to a skull! Crisp up his belly and dry out his balls and grind them up into a fine powder. Lay that all out on the table, invite over your nearest and dearest, and feast. And then make me a plate.” Pap also belittles his son’s education choices, studying human resources at the University of Phoenix. “Scam. Who goes to college online to learn how to manage human beings. Them things don’t go,” he scolds.

The potential relationship between Juicy and Opal has a bit of a problem that only the two of them are aware of: They are both gay. Meanwhile, Larry has a dark secret of his own. But the party goes on, as Rev sings Teena Marie and Juicy warbles Radiohead’s “Creep,” a kind of replacement for the “To be or not to be” soliloquy: “I don’t care if it hurts / I wanna have control / I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul / I want you to notice / When I’m not around / So fuckin’ special / I wish I was special / But I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doin’ here? / I don’t belong here.” The lyrics represent what so many young queer Black men experience, not wanting to be made to feel invisible and less than.

Juicy uses charades to tell his uncle he knows what he did: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of . . . the . . . King. Preacher. He is a preacher in this play,” he tells the audience. The game is on as Rev and Juicy battle it out.

Fat Ham is outrageously funny, featuring superb over-the-top performances by the ensemble. Spears (Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) has a tender gentleness, a softness, to his every move; dressed in all black (the contemporary costumes are by Dominique Fawn Hill), he would fit right in as Usher in Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, another “big Black queer” character with a complicated relationship with his family and other people who’s trying to figure out just who he is and what he wants out of life. Human resources is probably not Juicy’s best career path. Perhaps Ijames named him after the Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy,” in which Biggie Smalls declares, “You know very well / Who you are / Don’t let ’em hold you down / Reach for the stars / You had a goal / But not that many / ’Cause you’re the only one / I’ll give you good and plenty.”

Juicy’s (Marcel Spears) father (Billy Eugene Jones) is smokin’ in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ijames (White, Kill Move Paradise) interjects Shakespeare at just the right moments, as when, after Larry and Juicy share an intimate moment, the latter turns to the audience and delivers one of the Bard’s masterpieces, the poetic speech that begins “What a piece of work is a man!” But Ijames keenly changes one pronoun, and the meaning of the prose is altered following the scene we just watched,

Stacey Derosier’s lighting keeps things bright and cheery, as does Darrell Grand Moultrie’s choreography on Maruti Evans’s backyard set. Director Saheem Ali (Nollywood Dreams, Merry Wives) ably balances the wackiness with the serious nature of so much of Ijames’s dialogue alongside whimsical references to Ms. Cleo, OnlyFans, and sexy muppets. But it’s not all lighthearted fun.

At one point, Tio, talking about what he is learning from his therapist, explains to Juicy, “He said . . . These cycles of violence are like deep. Engrained. Hell, engineered. Hard to come out of. Like, your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, and what’s before that? Huh? Slavery. It’s inherited trauma. You carrying around your whole family’s trauma, man. And that’s okay. You okay. But you don’t got to let it define you.”

Juicy is determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, trying to overcome the systemic institutional racism that dooms so many Black men and tears apart families. That’s not exactly the same thing as the handing down of the crown from generation to generation of white men and boys — but it has the potential to become the half-million-dollar crown Biggie was famous for wearing.

FAT HAM

Marcel Spears stars as a different kind of Hamlet in James Ijames’s Pulitzer-winning Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

FAT HAM
Anspacher Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through July 31, $50-$80
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

There’s no “To be or not to be” in James Ijames’s rousing, spirited adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Hamlet. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, continuing at the Public’s Anspacher Theater through July 31, there’s no “To thine own self be true,” no “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” no “Good-night, sweet prince,” no “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” But to give you the tasty flavor of Ijames’s big queer Black take on the familiar tale, his Hamlet, known as Juicy (Marcel Spears), says, “Ah, there’s the rub” only after Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) shares the secret to smoking pork.

At its core, the story echoes the original. Juicy’s father, the king (Claudius; Jones), has been murdered by his brother, Rev, who then married his brother’s widow, Tedra (Gertrude; Nikki Crawford). Juicy hangs out with his best friend, Tio (Horatio; Chris Herbie Holland). Everyone assumes that Juicy is destined to wed his supposed true love, Opal (Ophelia; Adrianna Mitchell). Her very protective brother, Larry (Laertes; Calvin Leon Smith), is in the military and suffers from PTSD. Tedra’s best friend, Rabby (Polonius; Benja Kay Thomas), Larry and Opal’s mother, loves drinking and celebrating the Lord.

Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) leads a prayer before family and friends partake of barbecue in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

Juicy uses charades to tell his uncle he knows what he did: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of . . . the . . . King. Cook. He is a cook in this play,” he tells the audience. The game is on as Rev and Juicy battle it out.

Juicy (Marcel Spears) and Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) are not destined to fall in love in reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (photo by Joan Marcus)

Juicy is determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, trying to overcome the systemic institutional racism that dooms so many Black men and tears apart families. That’s not exactly the same thing as the handing down of the crown from generation to generation of white men and boys —but it has the potential to become the half-million-dollar crown Biggie was famous for wearing.

TWI-NY TALK: RICHARD TOPOL — PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

Rich Topol plays nonreligious narrator Patrick Salomon in Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 27, $99
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

About seven years ago, I was sitting in the audience at a play when I recognized the man in front of me, actor Richard Topol. I tapped him on the shoulder during intermission and told him that I had just seen him at the Signature in A. R. Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn and had enjoyed his performance. He thanked me, saying that he was actually the understudy and that was the only time he had gone on. He was even more thankful when I told him that I had included him in my review.

Since then we’ve bumped into each other a few other times at the theater and discussed various shows we’d seen. He’s an extremely amiable mensch who clearly loves his chosen profession. Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’re likely to know his face; he has approximately fifty television and film credits, including portraying lawyer and politician James Speed in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a recurring role on The Practice, and multiple parts on several Law & Order iterations.

But his true love is theater, which he also teaches. He has appeared extensively on and off Broadway, in such plays as The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino, Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington, Alice Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide with Carla Gugino, and Paula Vogel’s Tony-nominated Indecent with Katrina Lenk as well as Tony-winning revivals of Clifford Odets’s Awake & Sing! and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. He is currently starring in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, a scintillating three-hour exploration of anti-Semitism that travels between 1944 and 2016; Topol plays Patrick Salomon, a nonreligious Jew who has decided not to go into the family piano business.

Topol was raised in Mamaroneck and lost his father when he was twelve. He is married to actress Eliza Foss; they have one daughter, and Richard was close with his father-in-law, the late German-American composer, pianist, and conductor Lukas Foss.

During our wide-ranging Zoom conversation, Topol is thoughtful and generous, laughing and smiling a lot. Behind him in his living room is a landscape by his mother-in-law, the painter and teacher Cornelia (Brendel) Foss.

He admits that the most nervous he’s been in his life was when he hung out with Paul McCartney following a performance of Larry David’s Fish in the Dark, in which Topol played Dr. Stiles; after that, the Cute Beatle went from being his third favorite mop top — behind John and George — to his second.

A few days after Prayer for the French Republic opened at Manhattan Theater Club’s Stage I at City Center, we talked about one-person shows, getting Covid, baseball, and what it’s like being an actor in lockdown, including a detailed description of mounting a play as a pandemic continues.

Rich Topol starred as stage manager Lemml in Indecent (photo by Carol Rosegg)

twi-ny: During the pandemic, you appeared in several virtual and audio productions: You were in Melisa Annis’s Beginnings, Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck, Craig Lucas’s More Beautiful — and you played a chicken in Jimonn Cole’s Chickens.

richard topol: Oh my God! That was so much fun.

twi-ny: That was crazy.

rt: I loved Michael Potts in that.

twi-ny: You guys were great. Did you enjoy working on Zoom?

rt: No, no, no. I mean, I enjoyed working as opposed to not working. Shipwreck was the closest we got to working on a play because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks and it felt like, Okay, I’m going to rehearsal today. We did the kind of work that you do in a play before you get up on your feet. [Director] Saheem Ali was great and it was a great cast, obviously in a really interesting play. And we spent enough time with it to dig in the way you do in a play.

I mean, I also shot some TV shows over the course of the pandemic, so all of the Zoom stuff felt more like the way an actor like me connects to short-term work. You don’t develop a through-line, you don’t understand the arc of things. You’re not invested in a team, the whole idea of a team creating a thing and living together and becoming a version of a theater family, or whatever it is. Shipwreck was the closest to that.

twi-ny: As a listener, I felt it Shipwreck was one of the audio plays that worked the best during the lockdown. I got the feeling that this was a group of actors working in tandem.

rt: Right. I think because they had intended originally to produce it live, they had invested in it as fully and fulsomely as you do for a whole theater piece. There had been a lot of preparation. There was a sense of having more in the heads of the director and the producers, what we could imagine this great thing being, that infused the development and the rehearsal and experience of doing it. The Public took a lot of care in making it.

twi-ny: You finally returned to the stage in November in Portland with Searching for Mr. Moon, which is about fathers and sons, particularly about how you lost your father when you were very young and eventually found a father figure in Lukas Foss. This is your first one-man show, which you wrote with Willy Holtzman, a two-time Pulitzer nominee. What was the experience like sharing your life, in person, in front of people, back onstage? It’s a short question, right?

rt: The short answer is it was great. It was so satisfying. I remember at the time talking with people and saying, Oh my God, this is the longest period of time between . . . I was doing Anatomy of a Suicide at the Atlantic Theater Company.

twi-ny: Which was excellent. Loved it.

rt: Thank you. Yeah, I love that play. Intense. So that was the very last performance you could do in New York. And we were shut down. And so from March 12 of 2020 to November 3, 2021, was the longest period of time I hadn’t been onstage in my adult life. And I’ve been an actor for over three decades.

So it was thrilling to be back in a theater on a stage with a live audience, even though they were masked. So on the one hand, it was incredibly thrilling. And on the other hand, it was incredibly scary because it was the first play that I’d ever cowritten with anybody, and it was about my life. I felt more exposed than I’d ever felt before in my life. Willy and I had been talking about this play for a number of years. And then because the pandemic happened, we both had the time to really work on it. And that’s how it came to pass, and Anita Stewart, the artistic director of Portland Stage, was just a real cheerleader for the piece.

We did a developmental workshop in June up in Maine. That theater had stayed open through the pandemic because Maine had so few cases, because of the regulations, and because of their skill at keeping people safe. They produced a lot of one-person shows. They produced Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly — they cast a married couple who played the two parts.

But even though they’re being Covid careful, they have diminished audiences because there are a lot of people who feel, I’m not going to see a play. I’m not going to risk that.

twi-ny: A lot of people still feel that way.

rt: But Willy and I had a lot of time over the pandemic because there wasn’t much else to do to finish the play. And then Anita gave us a shot. We did the workshop, we did a live reading in front of people. It went really well and they’re, like, We want to produce this and we have a slot.

But because it’s about one of the hardest things and most personal struggles that I’ve experienced for the last forty-six years of my life, since my father died, it was scary to share, but it felt worth sharing. Willy was like, I want to write a one-man show for you. I’m like, Okay, sure. First of all, I don’t like one-person shows, I don’t like seeing one-person shows; they’re not interesting to me. I love acting with other people, and it can’t be about me because I’m not interesting. So what could it be about.

twi-ny: Three strikes and you’re out.

rt: Right. It was a total strikeout. And then Willy’s like, Come on, come on. And so initially we decided it would be about Lukas Foss, who was my father-in-law, a really interesting man who had a really interesting life. He escaped the Nazis. Like in Josh’s play, he was one of those people, a German Jew in Berlin who got out. Even though he wasn’t Jewish; he didn’t think of himself as a Jew. He had a really interesting life and a really challenging death.

He had Parkinson’s disease. He had a mind that was brilliant and fingers that could play — I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him play or listened to something. It’s unbelievable. If you can listen to him playing on Lenny Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety,” listen to the piano on that. It is unbelievable. And so the guy lost his physical abilities and his mental abilities. We thought, Okay, that’s an interesting idea for a play.

I’ve always had this obsession with searching for a father and he was my father-in-law, so let’s do that. And the play started to be about that. And the first two drafts of it were about that. It was this biodrama about Lukas and it was missing something.

Rich Topol debuted his intimate one-person show at Portland Stage in November (photo by No Umbrella Media LLC)

twi-ny: It needed more of you, probably.

rt: Yes, well, that’s what Willy said. And so, kicking and screaming, it became more and more about my relationship to Lukas and then my relationship to fatherhood. Then when my wife told the story to Willy about when she gave birth — the opening scene of the play is her giving birth to our daughter — and Eliza’s parents, in black tie, come in from a gala, bursting into the delivery room because they thought she was about to have a baby — she was about to have a baby — we’re like, What are you doing here? Get the fuck out of here. That seemed like a good starting-off point, discussing my becoming a father and my seeing the best potential father to me to help me learn how to be a father.

It was really satisfying to do. I was really glad to do it at Portland Stage, where most of the people who were watching knew nothing about me and I didn’t have to feel so exposed. I’m hoping to bring the show to New York, but I think doing it here, that’ll be scary.

Although my mother came and saw the show. My wife came and saw the show. People who know me and my life saw it. And I survived.

twi-ny: And they all want you to keep doing it. Since these are your lines and they’re about you, if a joke didn’t quite take or something emotional didn’t register with the audience, is it more or less upsetting than when you’re reciting somebody else’s words and something might not go as expected?

rt: Oh, less upsetting because I know I’m not a professional. I’m no Josh Harmon. Josh is a writer. I’m just some guy —

twi-ny: The third guy from the left.

rt: Exactly, the third guy from the left. At least in that experience I can cut myself some slack. It was the first production of the first play that I’ve ever cowritten. Willy did most of the writing. So that’s the sort of glib answer.

The truth is, most of the play, I play other people. I play my father-in-law. I play my mother, I play my wife, I play my mother-in-law. And in the scenes where I play myself, most of that writing is me, having written down my versions of stories that I’ve experienced. And so the ones that I was willing to share were the ones that couldn’t be avoided and, I guess, were the most important. Maybe I’m fooling myself. The play was well received, so I didn’t have the experience of Oh, that sucked. Right. Why am I doing this play?

twi-ny: Who talked you into this?!

rt: Who let me do this thing?

Let’s take that idea of writing and switch over to Prayer for the French Republic, which is exquisitely written. The language is so beautiful. What was the rehearsal process like?

rt: Well, it started actually in August of 2019, when Josh had been commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club to write a play. He came in with his finished draft and we did a reading of it, prepandemic and in-person. They hand delivered the scripts to everybody’s homes. They bicycled around Manhattan delivering the scripts because they didn’t want to email them. Josh was holding it close. I read it to myself and I thought, this is the best play I’ve read in ten years. And I mean, I haven’t read every play in the last ten years, but I’ve read a lot of plays and I’ve seen a lot of plays, and I thought, this is astoundingly amazing.

And so I was so excited to be part of the beginning of it. We did that reading and I think it confirmed for Manhattan Theatre Club and for Josh that he had latched on to something incredible. Then we did a couple of workshops that fall and then at the end of February of 2020. At that time I was reading Charles, actually.

twi-ny: That’s really interesting to me, because you fit so well as Patrick.

rt: Yeah, I know. I was like, No, no, no. When they said, Will you read Patrick? I was like, No, no, no, no, no. I love Charles. No, no, please don’t. They’re like, To be honest, Charles should be, if not actually North African, at least more Sephardic, more Middle Eastern. And so I was like, Okay, fine.

Now, of course, I’m totally madly in love with Patrick and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We did a workshop right before the pandemic hit in-person. And Josh had done some incredible things. And that’s when [director David] Cromer came on board. We’re already verklempt about it. So then the pandemic hit and immediately I got the virus.

The show closed on March 12. I had symptoms on the ides of March, on the 15th of March, and I was in bed for nineteen days with Covid-19.

twi-ny: So it was bad.

rt: It was miserable. I didn’t have it like Danny Burstein; I didn’t have to go to the hospital. Or Mark Blum, a lovely man who lost his life to it. And so it was the worst it could be without being bad. And then the symptoms were gone. We have a place upstate that we escaped too, and I got a call two days later from my agents. I’m like, Why is my agent calling me? The business is entirely shut down.

And she said, You just got an offer from Manhattan Theatre Club for Prayer for the French Republic. They want to do a workshop in July and then we’ll go into rehearsal in September and run till Christmas. And I thought, Oh, that’s perfect. This is the kind of play that should be running during the election. It felt to me that it was really important that this play be put up during the election. And then, of course, a month later, they’re, like, Yeah, we’re not going to do the workshop in July. But we’re still on track for the fall. And then a month later, it’s, Yeah, we’re not going to do the play in September. It’ll be sometime in 2021. We don’t know when but we’re still committed to doing the play.

And then we did a couple of Zoom workshops. We would do a weeklong workshop with the first act of the play, then the second act. And then another few months later we did the third. So we had a lot of time processing it with Josh and helping him wrangle this epic piece into what you saw. Then we got into the rehearsal space in December. And for those of us who’d been with it for two years, we’re like, Oh my God, we’re finally getting to do it. But still there was that sense of, Who’s producing a new eleven-person play, with nobody famous? It doesn’t have any songs —

twi-ny: And it’s about the Holocaust.

rt: Exactly. So kudos to them for sticking with it. And putting it up and investing in it, saying, I’m sorry, this is too important. We’re going to put this play up. We started first day of rehearsal learning about the Covid protocols, getting tested regularly.

twi-ny: Masked?

rt: We were wearing masks around the table. And then when we started up on our feet, we were unmasked, for those who were comfortable with that. And then one of our stage managers tested positive, and luckily she didn’t give it to anybody else. But at that point we’re like, Okay, we’re just wearing masks the whole time. We do not want to be shut down.

So this was the middle of December now, right before Christmas, and shows were going down left and right. We’re like, You know what, it’s not worth it. We do not want to shut this play down. Here we have been waiting for so long to do it. Let’s do what we can. And there were conversations among the cast about, Well, what do we do at home? Some of us have children and partners, but there was a real commitment to being safe so that we could get it up on our feet. And then Josh tested positive right before tech. And so actually the last few days of rehearsal and through tech, he watched the play like this.

twi-ny: On Zoom?

rt: There was a computer open and his computerized voice would come through. And again, he didn’t give it to anybody else. And then the testing protocols, we’re getting tested every day, and you can’t come into the room until you’ve tested negative, and, knock wood, that’s been it.

For the last six and a half weeks, we have been safe and we’ve been able to do it. And audiences have come. I am pleasantly surprised at how many hundreds of people are coming to see the show every day. I had seen a number of shows when I came back from Maine, and some had nobody in the audience and some were jam packed.

twi-ny: It’s been very strange. I went to a concert where everybody had to be masked and there were some empty seats, but it was pretty much sold out. But then I went to a hockey game and sixteen thousand people are screaming, no masks, lots of eating and drinking.

rt: Yeah. And I’m not going to any of that stuff. I did go see Hot Tuna and David Bromberg.

twi-ny: I love Bromberg.

rt: I looooove Bromberg.

twi-ny: How was he?

rt: He was great, for a seventy-year-old man. He was beautiful. He was really amazing. It was a really great time.

I’ve been to some plays where I’m sitting right next to total strangers and everybody has their mask on, and this was the same. Everybody did keep their masks on, but there were some drinking and eating. So we’ve been careful and thoughtful and fortunate, and I hope we continue to be so. Because it’s a great joy to do this play. It is a really challenging piece of theater and really satisfying to act in.

Rich Topol poses with a hot car on set of EPIX series Godfather of Harlem

twi-ny: Throughout your career, and especially more recently, you’ve played a lot of Jews: Sam Feinschreiber in Awake & Sing, Fritz Haber in Genius: Einstein, Lemml in Indecent, and now Patrick, who is a nonreligious Jew. Are you Jewish, or is it just a coincidence that you play a lot of Jews?

rt: I was born a Jew. I got bar mitzvahed. I think of myself as Jew-ish. I was in The Chosen a couple of times [There’s a knock at the door and Topol gets up to answer it, then returns.] That’s the exterminator, not exterminating Jews but exterminating bugs that Nazis would think are like Jews.

I’ve also actually played a lot of Jewish narrators who step into the play. I don’t think I’m as extreme as Patrick; Patrick is a Jew who doesn’t know anything about his Judaism and is happy to not know anything about his Judaism and is somebody who thinks of organized religion as what he says in the play, which is “bullshit.”

twi-ny: Which the character Molly agrees with.

rt: Right. I don’t subscribe there. But I’m also not religious. I think of myself as spiritual and, not to be too woo-woo, I believe in the earth. I’m a tree worshiper. I’m a tree hugger. Where I feel most soulful and spiritual is when I’ve climbed a mountain and I feel small in relation to a large, amazing thing. That’s the way I connect to religion. I think that most of the major religions are about feeling good to be small under the umbrella of something that’s bigger than our oneness, that connects us all.

twi-ny: I felt that that Josh really attacked the numerous angles of how to look at anti-Semitism and Israel and American Jewry. He covered everything. And without, I think, insulting anyone and without becoming didactic and preachy.

rt: He does a great job of giving everybody a valid argument. He’s really, really, really kind to all his characters. And thoughtful in allowing them to be really articulate people who have really strong opinions, and those opinions are different. And I think that’s one of the greatest things about the play, because it leaves the audience getting to consider those ideas that you’ve mentioned from a lot of perspectives. No, not from all perspectives, but certainly from a lot of perspectives within the Jewish community.

I’m always curious about what my non-Jewish friends who come and see the show think of it. I feel like the Jews, the Jews get it, the New York Jews get it, or they have really strong opinions about it.

twi-ny: Jon Stewart would ask, is it too Jewy?

rt: I have asked that of my non-Jewish friends. I’ve actually asked that of some of my Jewish friends too. Is this too Jewy? Is it just Jewy enough? Or is it not? The ones who are not Jews often say how the Jews in the play are just a specific example of the larger issue of otherness.

Look, we live in a world where the hate for other has been unleashed. And so what to do about that? If you’re a WASP from white privilege, maybe you look at this play and think, like Patrick, What’s the big deal, you know? Even those people understand, given what we’ve lived with, at least certainly for the last few years. But the larger questions that Josh asks in the play relate to almost everyone.

twi-ny: If Lukas were still around to see you in the show, would he be happy with your piano playing?

rt: I think he would be disappointed. And I’m slightly disappointed myself too, because I knew I was going to do this part for a long time and I knew that these songs were in the piece. But I feel like he shouldn’t be a better piano player than I am in this play. He doesn’t take over the family business. He shouldn’t be a lounge singer. I sing well, and maybe I’m justifying, but I feel like I play and sing just well enough but not too well for who he is. I love the progression of the piano in the play. It goes from Molly just clinking one note to me playing something schematic to Peyton [Lusk] playing that lovely Chopin piece to the end; the piano has a journey too. It’s a symbol, a metaphor for the journey of our family.

twi-ny: Okay, for my last question, I have a sort of bone to pick with you. You were a Mets fan, then you switched over to the Yankees. I mean, come on.

rt: Did I say that out loud somewhere?

twi-ny: I have my sources.

rt: Actually, it sort of timed out pretty well, you know? Because when I became a Yankees fan, the Yankee sucked. It’s interesting because it connects to the father thing.

My father died in 1975; I don’t remember whether I jumped ship in ’74 or ’75. I know I was a Mets fan in ’73, and then we moved, and my next-door neighbor was a Yankees fan. And I wanted to be his friend.

twi-ny: Right before Reggie.

rt: Exactly. So you can’t pick a bone with me if it was because my father had just died and my next-door neighbor was a Yankees fan. The Mets had been to the World Series, right?

twi-ny: Yes they had, with Yogi Berra as manager. You played Yogi in Bronx Bombers. I think a lot of people forget that. I met him once at a Mickey Mantle Foundation dinner at Gracie Mansion. He was by himself and I went over to him and said, I’m going to ask you something that no one probably ever asks you about. And I asked him about managing the ’73 Mets. He looked up, put on a big smile, and said in that Yogi way, “No one’s asked me about that in years. So I’ll tell you.” And he told me about how much fun it was doing that.

rt: That’s when I was a Mets fan. That was Buddy Harrelson, Wayne Garrett, Tommie Agee, Jerry Grote. I’m a lefty, so Tug McGraw was my hero.

twi-ny: So you played Yogi, and then you met him on opening night of the show. What was that like?

rt: He was really sweet and really happy to be there and to be seeing this play with his wife, Carmen, having this stuff brought to life.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: MERRY WIVES

An exuberant cast welcomes Shakespeare in the Park back to the Delacorte in Merry Wives (photo by Joan Marcus)

MERRY WIVES
Central Park, Delacorte Theater
Monday – Saturday through September 18, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

Shakespeare in the Park returns to the Delacorte after a canceled 2020 Covid summer season with the Public Theater’s exuberant but overbaked Merry Wives, continuing through September 18. Adapted by actress and playwright Jocelyn Bioh, who has appeared in such shows as An Octoroon and The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood and written such works as School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play and Nollywood Dreams, the play is thoroughly updated but often feels like a mash-up of such sitcoms as What’s Happening!! and The Jeffersons with such reality programs as The Bachelorette and Real Housewives.

The evening begins with Farai Malianga in a Brooklyn Nets Kyrie Irving jersey pounding on his djembe and eliciting an engaging call-and-response with the audience. It’s a wonderful start, reminiscent of how the late Baba Chuck Davis would kick off BAM’s annual DanceAfrica series. The seating is less thrilling but important, divided into sections full of vaccinated people who may choose not to mask — most don’t — and two emptier sections of unvaccinated people who must be masked and socially distanced.

Merry Wives is set in modern-day South Harlem, with a cast of characters from Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Senegal, portrayed exclusively by actors of color. In 2019, Kenny Leon directed a fabulous all-Black version of Much Ado About Nothing, but lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Madams Ford (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Page (Pascale Armand) join forces in contemporary update of Merry Wives (photo by Joan Marcus)

There’s a reason why The Merry Wives of Windsor is so rarely presented; it’s only been performed at the Delacorte twice before, in 1974 (with George Hearn, Marilyn Sokol, Barnard Hughes, Cynthia Harris, Michael Tucker, and Danny DeVito) and 1994 (with Margaret Whitton, David Alan Grier, Andrea Martin, Brian Murray, and Tonya Pinkins). It’s not one of the Bard’s better plays, a Medieval farce that tears down one of his most beloved creations, Sir John Falstaff, far too mean-spiritedly. And too many of the devices and subplots — mistaken identity, the exchange of letters, secret romance — feel like hastily written retreads here.

Falstaff (Jacob Ming-Trent) is a Biggie Smalls–loving wannabe playa out to conquer laundromat owner Madam Nkechi Ford (Susan Kelechi Watson) and socialite Madam Ekua Page (Pascale Armand), making cuckolds of their husbands, the distinguished Mister Nduka Ford (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and the generous Mister Kwame Page (Kyle Scatliffe).

“Nah man, I’m serious,” the sweats-wearing Falstaff tells Pistol (Joshua Echebiri), one of his minions. Madam Page “did so course over my exteriors with such a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass. She bears the purse too; she is from a region in Ghana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be sugar mamas to me; we’re gonna have the Ghanaian and the Nigerian jollof rice! Go bear this letter to Madam Page — and this one to Madam Ford. And then, my friend, I will thrive! . . . I mean . . . We will thrive.”

Misters Kwame Page (Kyle Scatliffe) and Nduka Ford (Gbenga Akinnagbe) try to avoid being cuckolded in Bard farce in Central Park (photo by Joan Marcus)

At the same time, the Pages’ daughter, Anne (Abena), is considered the most eligible bachelorette in Harlem and is being wooed by the well-established Doctor Caius (David Ryan Smith), the shy, nervous Slender (Echebiri), and Anne’s true love, Fenton (MaYaa Boateng), whom no one approves of. Manipulating various elements are the caring Pastor Evans (Phillip James Brannon) and the busybody Mama Quickly (Angela Grovey). Madams Ford and Page get wind of Falstaff’s deceit and team up to confound him, while a jealous Mister Ford disguises himself as a Rastaman named Brook to try to uncover Falstaff’s plan to bed his wife. “Please, off with him!” Sir John tells Brook about Ford. “I will stare him out of his wits, I will awe him with my club; I shall hang like Lebron James over the cuckold’s horns.” It all concludes with a series of matches that are as playful as they are convenient and contemporary.

Beowulf Boritt’s set is fabulous, consisting of the facades of a health clinic, a laundromat, and a hair braiding salon, which open up to reveal various interiors. Dede Ayite’s gorgeous costumes honor traditional African designs with bold colors and patterns. But director Saheem Ali (Fireflies, Fires in the Mirror), the Public’s associate artistic director who helmed audio productions of Romeo y Julieta, Richard II, and Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 during the pandemic lockdown, can’t get a grip on the story, instead getting lost in silly, repetitive slapstick that overwhelms the narrative. The laughs come inconsistently, settling for trivial humor over sustained comedy. This Merry Wives is a crowd pleaser the way familiar but routine sitcoms and reality shows are; light and frothy, none too demanding, but once they’re done, you’re on to the next program.

ROMEO Y JULIETA

The Public Theater’s bilingual radio play Romeo y Julieta was rehearsed over Zoom (screenshot courtesy the Public Theater)

Who: Saheem Ali, Lupita Nyong’o, Juan Castano, Alfredo Michel Modenessi, Rebeca Ibarra, more
What: Online premiere listening party for bilingual audio production of Romeo y Julieta
Where: The Greene Space and the Public Theater
When: Thursday, March 18, free with RSVP, 6:45 (stream available for one year)
Why: Unsurprisingly, audio plays have made a comeback during the pandemic, with theaters in lockdown. Keen Company’s Season of Audio Theater has included finkle’s 1993 and Pearl Cleage’s Digging in the Dark, with James Anthony Tyler’s All We Need Is Us up next. Playing on Air, which predated the Covid-19 crisis, has posted such nonvisual works as Cary Gitter’s How My Grandparents Fell in Love, Daniel Reitz’s Napoleon in Exile, Naveen Bahar Choudhury’s Skin, and Dominique Morisseau’s Jezelle the Gazelle, featuring such actors as Julie White, Jesse Eisenberg, Marsha Mason, Ed Asner, Jane Kaczmarek, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and others.

Meanwhile, the Public Theater has presented Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 as well as the four-part Free Shakespeare on the Radio: Richard II, adapted and directed by Saheem Ali. Ali has now teamed up with playwright Ricardo Pérez González on Romeo y Julieta, a bilingual audio adaptation based Alfredo Michel Modenessi’s Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s heart-wrenching tragedy.

Colorful illustrations by Erick Dávila add visuals to bilingual radio play (courtesy the Public Theater)

The play alternates between English and Spanish; thankfully, you don’t hear every line in both languages, or else the show would be four hours long. However, the Public provides the script on its website so you can follow along and see the full translation. (The website also offers a visual guide to the cast and characters, a bilingual synopsis, colorful illustrations by Erick Dávila, and a trailer.) Presented in conjunction with WNYC Studios and the Greene Space, the radio play premieres on March 18 at 6:45 with much virtual fanfare, kicking off with a preshow greeting and cocktail demonstration (Mezcal Negroni or nonalcoholic Mojito), hosted by WNYC’s Rebeca Ibarra. Then the group listening party starts at 7:00, followed by a live talkback and Q&A with Ali, actors Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Juliet, and Juan Castano, who stars as Romeo, and translator Modenessi, moderated by Ibarra. Everything is free with advance RSVP, but you have to supply your own drinks.

The rest of the cast consists of Carlo Albán as Benvolio, Karina Arroyave as the apothecary, Erick Betancourt as Abram, Michael Braugher as Balthasar, Carlos Carrasco as Lord Montague, Ivonne Coll as the nurse, John J. Concado as Peter, Hiram Delgado as Tybalt, Guillermo Diaz as Gregory, Sarah Nina Hayon as Lady Montague, Kevin Herrera in the ensemble, Modesto Lacen as Prince Escalus and Capulet’s cousin, Florencia Lozano as Capulet, Irene Sofia Lucio as Mercutio, Keren Lugo as Sister Joan, Benjamin Luis McCracken as Paris’s page, Julio Monge as Friar Lawrence, Javier Muñoz as Paris, and David Zayas as Sampson. The original score by Michael Thurber is performed by Jon Lampley on trumpet, Eddie Barbash on alto saxophone, and Mark Dover on bass clarinet; bassist Thurber will also entertain the audience during intermission. The stream of the radio play will be available for one year.

SHIPWRECK: A HISTORY PLAY ABOUT 2017

All-star cast of audio play Shipwreck rehearses over Zoom (photo courtesy the Public Theater)

Public Theater
Five-part audio presentation
Started streaming October 16, free (closed captions added by October 26)
publictheater.org

“I haven’t had a Trump-free twenty-four hours in, oh, I think it’s been over a year,” Allie says in Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017, a satiric audio drama streaming for free from the Public Theater. She has no idea what she’s in for. Shipwreck premiered in February from DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and was scheduled to run at the Public as well, but it has now been repurposed by Washburn and original director Saheem Ali for online listening, divided into three parts in addition to an introductory program note and a water cooler discussion. The show takes place in an eighteenth-century upstate farmhouse, where a group of liberal friends have gathered in the wake of James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017. Jools (Sue Jean Kim) and Richard (Richard Topol) have invited Mare (Mia Barron) and Jim (Rob Campbell), Luis (Raúl Esparza) and Andrew (Jeremy Shamos), Lawrence (Bruce McKenzie), and Allie (Brooke Bloom) to spend the weekend at their new country home, as they agree and disagree about such topics as white privilege, Lord of the Rings, the big bad city, conspiracy theories, chaos voters, Comey’s personality, racism, Jim Jones, liberal dreams, the rule of law, and what’s for dinner. Also making critical appearances are Comey (Joe Morton), George W. Bush (Phillip James Brannon, sounding more like Barack Obama), and Donald J. Trump (Bill Camp), along with his secretary (Jenny Jules). Washburn (Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play; A Devil at Noon) gets the absurdist tone just right, nailing sarcasm and irony, hypocrisy and elitism by a group of friends who are sure they know best, especially when they find out that one of them might not have voted blue in 2016. “Who are those self-obsessed white people?” my wife called out at one point from the other room, not knowing what I was doing.

Director Saheem Ali leads online rehearsal for Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 (photo courtesy the Public Theater)

One of the key exchanges, and a terrific example of Washburn’s knack for incisive, realistic dialogue, occurs when a conversation uncomfortably turns to Black people and Trump. Allie begins, “You know who wasn’t surprised by all this? The Black people. They saw Trump coming.”

Mare: “Yeah . . .”
Andrew: “Yes, so I read in the media.”
Allie: “When we were all so freaked out, how could this happen!? They were like: Yeah . . . we know why.’ And now all heads swivel towards the Black people: What else do they know?”
Andrew: “Is that what the heads are really doing?”
Richard: “Racism, systemic racism played a part, it totally played a part obviously but big obvious scapegoats aren’t going to help us out of this situation.”
Andrew: “Okay wait wait can we hold up for a moment. ‘The Black People.’ ‘The Black People. . . .’”
Jools: “‘The Black People. . . .’”
Jim: “Nope, Allie, it doesn’t sit right.”
Allie: “I mean yes, of course it doesn’t. There’s a certain deliberate . . . tart irony there, no? Like we’re all so woke we can — I can’t, I don’t know if I can fully unpack it but no, I’m not saying ‘the Black People’ like I think it’s okay it’s so obviously not-okay.”
Mare: “So ironic racism is fine is what you’re saying.”
Jools: “Didn’t we have that little talk about using ‘unpack’ in normal conversation among actual humans?”
Allie: “Sometimes jargon is useful. . . . Black People. Black People saw this coming. That sounds weird to me like pseudo-mythic: ‘Black People,’ ‘Green People,’ ‘People of the Mist,’ ‘Zoners.’”
Andrew: “African American is an option.”
Allie: “Obviously, only African American is kind of I mean I know it’s not my place but it’s a lot of syllables and it’s a little bit formal like you’re trying too hard and I thought didn’t we have an unspoken agreement that we were as a group implicitly avoiding that brand of ultra-performative white liberalism also because there’s no distinction there and do Black people or people who are ‘black’ use the term? I’m confused about that and okay I know this is my own personal private but there’s no distinction between people who were brought here in chains three hundred years ago in the hold of a ship and and all of that and people from, like, Namibia who wandered over twenty years ago and sure it’s racist here but they have generations of intact cultural identity for back-up these are not the same people.”
Mare: “Okay, Allie . . .”
Jim: “Oh, you’ve forgotten Colonialism.”
Allie: “I mean yes, Colonialism, yes, but it’s not the same. Colonialism doesn’t eviscerate . . . ‘black people’ sounds like, flat and kind . . . yes yes you’re right Colonialism can I mean it depends on who but no but in general, yes, Colonialism, terrible but it isn’t the same it’s just not but ‘black people’ that’s . . .”
Andrew: “I kind of beg to differ . . .”
Allie: “. . . crude . . . maybe I mean crude . . . they’re — no one’s black nobody’s white it’s a built-in oppositional it’s absurdly reductive when we’re all just, when we’re really all just . . . a spectrum of tan.”

At more than two and a half hours not including the intro and postshow talk, the play requires patience on the part of the listener, especially as we’re all so bombarded with 24/7 images from television and the internet and addicted to our phones. Radio plays were once an important and necessary form of entertainment, and the Public is doing what it can in these pandemic times to bring it back, first with its presentation of Richard II in July, which suffered because of commercials on WNYC, and now with the superior Shipwreck, a history play about today, and tomorrow. Get those headphones ready.