Tag Archives: Teresa Avia Lim

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE

Red Bull and Fiasco join forces for delightful revival of The Knight of the Burning Pestle (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Monday – Saturday through May 13, $77-$112
212-352-3101
www.redbulltheater.com
www.fiascotheater.com

After seeing the wonderful revival of Francis Beaumont’s 1607 comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a collaboration between Red Bull and Fiasco that opened last week at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, I rushed home to read up on the Elizabethan pastiche. Surely these two inventive and consistently reliable New York–based companies had made significant changes to the plot, which centers on what I imagined was a twenty-first-century twist when it came to breaking the fourth wall. But to my delightful surprise, directors Noah Brody and Emily Young have remained faithful to the original story, though adding plenty of playful touches along the way.

The festivities kick off as an ensemble announces that it is about to present a show called The London Merchant when a grocer named George (Darius Pierce) jumps out of the audience and onto the stage, demanding that the troupe perform a different play. “Down with your title!” he proclaims. Believing they are elitists who “sneer at citizens,” George would prefer a play about the common man — say, a grocer — with a title like The Legend of Lord Wittington and His Exemplary Cat or The Story of Queen Elenor with the Rearing of London Bridge from a Tax on Woolsacks.

He is soon joined by his wife, Nell (Jessie Austrian), and they convince the actors to add George’s apprentice, Rafe (Paco Tolson), to the cast, as a stately, heroic grocer they christen the Knight of the Burning Pestle. After initial hesitation, the ensemble decides to proceed with the show, with Rafe’s presence providing the opportunity for everyone to improvise. George and Nell, meanwhile, sit in chairs at stage left, critiquing everything and interrupting whenever they don’t like what’s happening — usually involving Rafe’s not getting enough to do.

In the central narrative, apprentice Jasper Merrythought (Devin E. Haqq), who serves the wealthy Venturewell (Tina Chilip), is in love with his master’s daughter, Luce (Teresa Avia Lim). But Venturewell has decided to marry her off to fashionable gentleman and dullard Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey). “You know my rival?” Jasper asks Luce, who replies, “Yes, and love him dearly, even as I love an ague or foul weather; I prithee, Jasper, fear him not.”

Venturewell (Tina Chilip) tries to force Luce (Teresa Avia Lim) to marry Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey) in 1607 comedy by Francis Beaumont (photo by Carol Rosegg)

When Venturewell tells Humphrey, “Come, I know you have language good enough to win a wench,” Nell cries out, “A whoreson mother! She’s been a panderer in ’er days, I warrant her.” George holds his wife back, saying, “Chicken, I pray thee heartily, contain thyself.” He then turns to the actors and says, “You may proceed.” Such interruptions continue throughout the play, becoming more and more disruptive.

Meanwhile, Jasper’s parents, Charles (Ben Steinfeld) and Mistress Merrythought (Tatiana Wechsler), have apparently fallen out of love. She is a determined woman who will not give her blessing to her eldest son, whom she considers a “waste-thrift,” instead promising her inheritance to her other child, Michael (Royer Bockus). The unemployed Charles has spent nearly all his money on fine food and drink but still finds joy in life, particularly when it comes to singing, much to his wife’s chagrin. She commands that he is responsible for Jasper’s future, expecting them both to fail miserably.

Among the other characters are Rafe’s apprentice, Tim (Steinfeld), who accompanies the knight on his journey of protecting fair ladies and distressed damsels; the squire Tapster (Paul L. Coffey), who runs the Bell End Inn with a threatening host (Chilip); the evil giant Barbaroso (Haqq); the lusty princess of Cracovia (Austrian); and Little George (Bockus), Rafe’s faithful horse.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a great choice for Red Bull and Fiasco to team up on. The latter specializes in Jacobean dramas and farces (Ben Jonson’s Volpone, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal) as well as modern takes on Shakespeare (Coriolanus, Erica Schmidt’s Mac Beth), while Fiasco alternates among Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along), the Bard (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline), and Molière (The Imaginary Invalid).

Royer Bockus, Ben Steinfeld, Paco Tolson, and Tatiana Wechsler are part of terrific ensemble in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Their sensibilities mesh in organic ways in this splendid interpretation of Beaumont’s rarely performed play. Christopher Swader and Justin Swader’s set features a wooden floor and back wall, the latter with surprise openings. Two painted backdrops move the action to an inn and the forest, and a rolling door serves as the entrance to the Merrythought home. There are chairs scattered on each side, where the actors sit when they’re not part of the scene, some occasionally playing instruments, a hallmark of Fiasco productions. Some musical interludes work better than others; a group singalong on the old-time ballad “De Derry Down” is engaging, and a jolly version of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave” is delightfully frisky, but a rewritten take on Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and a too-long solo by Steinfeld in which he makes sounds with his mouth and by striking parts of his body feel out of place.

Yvonne Miranda’s costumes range from the relatively contemporary to seventeenth-century traditional to theatrical makeshift, as when Rafe dons a metal colander for a helmet and uses a metal trashcan top as a shield. (The funny props are by Samantha Shoffner.) Reza Bahjat’s lighting includes nearly two dozen chandeliers and fixtures that extend over the audience, as if we’re part of the production — and we are, represented by George and Nell onstage.

The couple’s interventions are a mixture of purposely awkward and fresh, given the recent spate of shows having to stop or be delayed because of audience members yelling at actors, singing along too loud (contrary to theater instructions), or crawling onto the set to plug their phone into a fake outlet. When George gives the troupe two shillings in order to have specific music, it evokes a producer making an unreasonable demand, then watching closely to ensure it is done.

Brody and Young (you can watch an online RemarkaBULL Podversation with them here) have also performed in many of Fiasco’s productions; as directors, they get the best out of their talented cast, giving them a freedom that they gleefully embrace. Pierce chews up the scenery as the annoying George, Tolson excels as the stalwart Rafe, and Bockus brings the house down as Rafe’s horse.

Beaumont, who died in 1616 around the age of thirty-two, wrote only one other play by himself, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, while collaborating with John Fletcher on thirteen works, including The Woman Hater, A King and No King, and Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding. I imagine he would be quite satisfied with Red Bull and Fiasco’s collaboration on The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME

Once Upon a (korean) Time offers a remarkable theatrical experience at La MaMa (photo by Richard Termine)

ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Tuesday – Sunday through September 18, $60-$80
212-475-7710
ma-yitheatre.org
www.lamama.org

“Fairy and folk tale tropes offer modern authors . . . ideal frameworks and well-known terms of reference through which to explore the meanings and mythologies of war, both real and imagined. They do so for children and adults alike,” editors Sara Buttsworth and Maartje Abbenhuis write in the introduction to their 2016 book, War, Myths, and Fairy Tales (Palgrave Macmillan). Playwright and actor Daniel K. Isaac and director Ralph B. Peña take that approach to the next level in Ma-Yi Theater Company’s explosive yet intimate Once Upon a (korean) Time, running at La MaMa through September 18.

The ninety-five-minute show was inspired by Isaac’s biological family as well as his chosen family — in a moving program note he explains, “I am an only child of a Korean immigrant single parent [who fled south during the Korean War]. I do not know my biological father or his side of the family or their history. My maternal grandparents passed before I was born. . . . I have been disowned multiple times for being gay. . . . So the notion of ‘family’ is complicated for me.”

The notion of family is central to the play, which unfurls across a series of interrelated vignettes in which different kinds of battles provide opportunities to tell Korean folk tales as both distraction and metaphor in the midst of heated conflict. The first chapter, “Earth,” takes place in a trench in the 1930s, where two soldiers are under brutal attack. “We gotta get outta here / How do we get outta here / Should we make a run for it / Let’s make a run for it / I don’t wanna die / I’m too young to die / I don’t wanna be here / Get me out of here get me out of here get me out,” one of the soldiers cries out. He demands that the other soldier retell him the legend of brothers Heung-bu and Nol-bu: After their parents die, one sibling inherits everything and banishes the other and his pregnant wife and child. But a single seed from a previously injured baby jeh-bee (swallow) results in magic calabashes that just might right the wrongs.

Two women (Sonnie Brown and Jillian Sun) meet during the 1992 LA riots in Once Upon a (korean) Time (photo by Richard Termine)

The scene is brilliantly directed by Peña on Se Hyun Oh’s bold set, which is highlighted by two massive vertical boulders that rotate throughout the play to form a variety of walls, blockades, caves, and other barriers. As the soldiers hide behind rocks, bullets fly past and bombs explode ever closer; the audience is seated on the same side of the trench as the soldiers, immersing everyone in the dire situation. Oliver Wason’s lighting and Fabian Obispo’s sound, along with projections by Yee Eun Nam and Phuong Nguyen’s costumes, make us feel like we are all in harm’s way. It’s about as powerful an opening scene as I’ve experienced in a long time.

The involving depiction of the horrors of war continues with “Water,” set in a WWII comfort station where three Korean women, one a virgin, are being sexually, physically, and psychologically abused by viciously hostile Japanese soldiers. To distract the virgin from what is soon to happen to her, the other two women share the story of Shim-Cheong, a woman who sacrifices herself in order to save the life of her blind father.

A through line begins to develop as the action moves to a cave during the Korean War (“Heaven”) where the story of the Tiger and the Bear is told, a convenience store (“Fire”) amid the 1992 LA riots supplemented with the tale of the Grandma and the Tiger, and a contemporary gathering where three couples meet at a Korean BBQ restaurant and put it all in context as they await the future.

The stories within the stories offer compelling Korean myths to accompany the central narrative, especially since the outstanding cast goes back and forth between portraying the mythological figures and the “real” characters, sometimes as plays within the play. In “Water,” for example, one of the comfort women tells the virgin that she will be Shim-Cheong, then lays out the plot, gives her her motivation, and even makes a key alteration to her costume.

A Korean BBQ restaurant is the setting for the poignant conclusion of Daniel K. Isaac play (photo by Richard Termine)

Obie-winning Ma-Yi founding member and producing artistic director Peña and Isaac, who previously worked together on Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady — Isaac is best known as an actor, appearing in numerous plays as well as in Billions and other television shows and films and will next be seen in You Will Get Sick at Roundabout next month — also zeroes in on the ideas of legacy, tradition, and belonging, from defending one’s homeland to emigrating overseas. As soon as the young woman walks into the convenience store, the older woman says, “I telling you story.” The young woman asks, “Like once upon a time?” The older woman replies, “No / That American thing.”

At the BBQ restaurant, the six people discuss such fairy tales as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast as well as their family histories. “Korean stories are so funny,” Jon says. “And usually way more gruesome,” Sasha adds.

Once Upon a (korean) Time is both funny and gruesome, an expertly told tale that excites the eyes and the ears and keeps the heart pumping. There are no lags; something is always happening onstage, and constant movement and projections keep the audience entranced. The seven actors are extraordinary, with Sonnie Brown, Sasha Diamond, David Lee Huynh, Teresa Avia Lim, Jon Norman Schneider, David Shih, and Jillian Sun playing multiple roles. A jubilant scene in which the Sea Dragon bursts into a musical number could have felt out of place but instead is a welcome break from all the solemnity, even as he eagerly declares, “I hear we have a virgin in the house!”

Once Upon a (korean) Time is a gripping, all-too-real story of intergenerational trauma. Peña has called it “insane,” and insane it is, in only the best way. Isaac has dedicated the play to his mother, who will not be able to see it because she refuses to get vaccinated. And that’s a genuine shame, because her son has given the rest of us a remarkable theatrical experience.

SNOW IN MIDSUMMER

Classic Stage Company’s Snow in Midsummer bites off more than it can chew (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

SNOW IN MIDSUMMER
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $70
www.classicstage.org

As an aficionado of Asian ghost stories — I’ve seen more than my fair share of horror flicks from Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines — I was looking forward to Classic Stage Company’s Snow in Midsummer, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s adaptation of Guan Hanqing’s thirteenth-century Yuan dynasty drama The Injustice to Dou Yi That Moved Heaven and Earth. The play was originally presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017 as part of its Chinese Translations Project; CSC’s version, directed by Zi Alikhan, can’t find its way out of Cowhig’s overstuffed, undercooked narrative. While the central ghost story, involving grave injustice, works well, every aspect of the rest of the tale is overwhelmed by myriad social justice elements that just keep coming from every direction.

Three years earlier, in the remote factory town of New Harmony in Jiangsu Province, Dou Yi (Dorcas Leung) was executed for a crime she claims she did not commit. “If we still live on a planet that hates injustice, / Snow will fall from the clouds and shield my remains. / May that snow be the last water that falls on New Harmony until / Justice is brought to Dou Yi,” she proclaims, awaiting her death. “Officers — / Do you see the white flag flapping overhead? / If I am innocent, / Not a drop of hot blood will spill onto the green earth or / Stain my clothes, no matter how many bullets pierce this flesh / My blood will fly towards the Blue Sky and / Stain the white flag flying above. . . . I promise you — / It is the hottest time of the year, / But soon snow will tumble down like cotton / And New Harmony will experience the wrath of a drought for three years. / They say Heaven has no sympathy for the human heart — / The Blue Sky will answer my prayers. / Mother! / Wait until snow falls in June and drought lasts three years. / Only then will my innocent soul be — ”

In the present, a drought is threatening the very existence of the town. Tianyun (Teresa Avia Lim), a single mother who grew up in a nearby village, has returned to the area and purchased the factory previously owned by Master Zhang (Kenneth Lee), who Dou Yi was accused of murdering. Tianyun rose from teenage migrant to assembly line employee to operating the largest synthetic flower company in the country. As Master Zhang’s son, Handsome Zhang (John Yi), prepares to propose in public to Rocket Wu (Tommy Bo), his true love, Tianyun’s six-year-old daughter, Fei-Fei (Fin Moulding), warns, “Don’t propose during Ghost Month! It’s an invitation for spirits to visit!” Nurse Wong (Wai Ching Ho), who runs the local bar, replies, “Wasn’t the Cultural Revolution supposed to wipe out rural superstition?”

Things are set in motion when the ghost of Dou Yi appears to Fei-Fei and they declare in unison, “Heart of Sorrow, Tears of Suffering. How will you redeem my three-year rotting bones? / No rain and not an inch of grass has grown. Injustice killed this girl of youth and spring. No one on earth has avenged me. / Earth — why have you only mourned but not fought for me?” As Tianyun and Fei-Fei attempt to find out what really happened to Master Zhang, they are continually thwarted by citizens of a town who have a lot to hide, from Mother Cai (Wai Ching Ho), Nurse Wong, Doctor Lu (Kenneth Lee), and Judge Wu (Lee) to a trio of factory workers (Paul Juhn, Julian Leong, and Alex Vinh), the local police, and Handsome himself.

There are several creepy, eerie moments involving Dou Yi as she seeks her revenge, but they get lost amid a sea of social justice tropes immersed in overdramatized and overacted melodrama. Instead of focusing on the misogyny and abuse that led to the execution of Dou Yi and its extensive cover-up, Cowhig and Alikhan throw in police and government corruption, homophobia, illegal organ harvesting, income inequality, class and gender differences, deforestation, the death penalty, generational trauma, climate change, and other issues. This kitchen-sink approach drowns a play that otherwise has a solid core. The spare sets by dots are effective in their simplicity, and Jeanette Yew’s lighting maintains an otherworldly quality. Leung (Miss Saigon, Hamilton) and Lim (Junk, The Alchemist) stand out among the uneven cast, who are dressed in Johanna Pan’s unflattering costumes.

Perhaps Snow in Midsummer would have been more successful if it had been significantly cut down from its outstretched two-and-a-half-hour length (with intermission) and did not try to tackle most of the world’s current problems all at once; I could see it working well in a kind of modern-day Kwaidan omnibus, concentrating on Dou Yi’s tragic but, unfortunately, universal story.

THE ALCHEMIST

Manoel Felciano, Reg Rogers, and Jennifer Sánchez play a trio of swindlers in Red Bull revival of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE ALCHEMIST
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through December 19, $70
Available for streaming January 12-26
www.redbulltheater.com
newworldstages.com

Red Bull Theater was one of the most active companies during the pandemic, presenting livestreamed reunion readings of previous productions, the online interview series RemarkaBULL Podversations, and deep explorations into Othello and Pericles. So it’s disappointing that its return to live, in-person theater is an overbaked version of Ben Jonson’s 1610 Jacobean farce, The Alchemist.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Jesse Berger — the same team that gave us the superb 2017 revival of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector — The Alchemist is a hot mess, a frantic, unrelenting satire laden with anachronistic references and modern speech that bury what Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously referred to as one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned.” (The other two, in his opinion, were Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.)

The tale is set in 1606 in the Lovewit mansion in London as plague rips through the land; the wealthy master has left for the countryside, reminding us that the rich haven’t changed much, considering their response to the current coronavirus pandemic. A voiceover announces at the start, “Some wear masks, just like you do, that cover the nose and mouth and comply with CDC guidelines at all times, including during the show, except while actively drinking at your seat, so if you’re going to drink, drink actively.”

Lovewit’s manservant, the rogue Face (Manoel Felciano), has teamed up with the charlatan alchemist Subtle (Reg Rogers) and their bawdy colleague, Dol Common (Jennifer Sánchez), to con members of the local community out of their money. When the trio learns that Lovewit is unexpectedly returning in two hours, they ramp up their schemes as they attempt to defraud the tobacconist Abel Drugger (Nathan Christopher), the law clerk Dapper (Carson Elrod), the deacon Ananias (Stephen DeRosa), and the knight Sir Epicure Mammon (Jacob Ming-Trent) and his butler from Brooklyn, the surly skeptic known as Surly (Louis Mustillo).

Red Bull returns to in-person theater with The Alchemist at New World Stages (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Subtle might think he is in charge, but Face is quick to remind him, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past known to all the neighborhood as that scurvy beetle who nothing did but loiter at the corner in moldy rags so thin scarce covered they your buttocks. I took pity on you, gave you roof and a bed, replaced your tatters with well-cut cloth, and introduced you to that household item called the bathing tub.” Subtle responds, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past that lowly servant who nothing did but sit your master’s house with no one to converse with save your brooms and dustpans. Twas I took pity on you, raised you up to your potential, taught you to present yourself so convincingly as a captain with a beard so nautical it could fool a blind man who’s never been to sea. Twas I conceived the scheme, tis I should take the largest share!” Meanwhile, Dol points out about their Venture Tripartite, “Well, if we three do not this treasure equal share, you two shall not share mine.”

Despite already having a heavy chest brimming with ill-gotten gains and Lovewit’s arrival fast approaching, Face and Subtle can’t control their greed when they learn of a wealthy widow, Dame Pliant (Teresa Avia Lim), who has come to town with her protective brother, Kastril (Allen Tedder). So they set out to scam her as well, agreeing not to tell Dol. Their nefarious plans play out in real time, a grandfather clock ticking away throughout the nearly two-hour show as things grow more and more frenetic and overwrought.

Red Bull and founding artistic director Berger know their way around classic works, as evidenced by their stellar adaptations of John Ford’s 1630s drama, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners, The School for Scandal, and Jonson’s 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone. But they try too hard to make The Alchemist relevant to this moment in time, sacrificing story for slapstick. Alexis Distler’s two-floor set is filled with doorways, a staircase, and surprise entryways, but the timing of the various door slams is too often slightly off. At one point Rogers ad-libbed about having to run up and down the stairs again, and we feel his pain. As always with Red Bull, the costumes (by Tilly Grimes) are wonderfully extravagant, as is Tommy Kurzman’s wig and makeup design.

The show suffers from being in the 199-seat Stage 5 at New World Stages, which is too small and intimate for such a broadly played farce; you’re liable to get whiplash from swiveling your head back and forth and up and down so much, particularly as Subtle changes from “a mystic newly come from Rotterdam” to “a fortune teller late of Portugal” to “a Swedish hypnotist learned in financial planning.” Perhaps it will be easier to take when it is available for streaming January 12-26.

In a program note, Hatcher wryly admits, “Of course, I did screw around with the plot. Ours is a slimmed down version of the play, with fewer characters and one setting instead of four. So, apart from dumbing down the highbrow jokes, ruining the perfect plot, tossing in anachronisms, and adding a song very much like one sung by Shirley Bassey in 1964, the play is pretty much your grandmother’s The Alchemist.” The talented cast, led by Obie winner Rogers, does its best with this dumbing down, seeming to enjoy themselves immensely, as did much of the audience the night I went. I wish I felt the same.

MOBILE UNIT’S SUMMER OF JOY

THE PUBLIC THEATER’S MOBILE UNIT
Multiple locations in all five boroughs
July 31 – August 29, free
publictheater.org

The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit is back on the road after being sidelined by the pandemic lockdown last year, bringing free pop-up Shakespeare to locations across the five boroughs. “I always felt that we should travel,” Public founder Joseph Papp said once upon a time. “I wanted to bring Shakespeare to the people.” The Public has been doing just that in one form or another since 1957; this summer the Mobile Unit, in its tenth year, will be bringing two productions to plazas and squares from July 31 to August 29. Each presentation begins with the National Black Theatre’s Stage for Healing and Resilience, which will provide a space for reflection, meditation, and sharing. That will be followed by Verses @ Work — The Abridged Mix, Mobile Unit in Corrections artist Malik Work’s one-man show that incorporates verse, video, live music, musical theater, jazz, hip-hop, spoken word, and dance. Coproduced by the Public with NBT and directed by Vernice Miller, the autobiographical piece, inspired in part by Homer’s Odyssey, was nominated for a 2017 Audelco Award for Best Solo Performance and was turned into a film; Work has also staged a one-man adaptation of Timon of Athens and teaches Shakespeare, acting, and hip-hop theater. The free afternoon concludes with the hourlong Shakespeare: Call and Response; conceived by director Patricia McGregor, it features Sofia Jean Gomez, Teresa Avia Lim, Reza Salazar, and Work interacting with the audience through text, music, dance, and improv, playing multiple roles anchored by an MC and DJ duo rapping in iambic pentameter, with scenic design by Diggle, costumes by Katherine O’Neill, sound by Jorge Olivo, and choreography by Paloma McGregor (Patricia’s sister).

“The Mobile Unit is the purest expression of the Public’s conviction that the culture belongs to everyone. Our return this summer is a thrilling and responsive artistic expression born from this historical moment. We are responding to the call of community and creating a unifying embodiment of theater for this city,” Public artistic director Oskar Eustis said in a statement. Mobile Unit director Karen Ann Daniels added, “It is essential for the Mobile Unit to build something that could speak to the moment — a unique format that would reinvigorate our communal spaces and our connection to each other. We all came to the table with a strong sense that it is only through the creation of our art, and inviting our community’s participation in it, that we could offer healing, resilience, and the unbridled joy of the simple act of gathering.” The tour begins July 31 and August 1 at Astor Plaza, moving August 5-6 to Roberto Clemente Plaza, August 7-8 to Johnny Hartman Plaza, August 12 and 28-29 to Osborn Plaza, August 13 and 20 to Albee Square, August 14-15 to 125th Street Plaza, August 19 and 26-27 to Minthorne Street, and August 21-22 to Myrtle/Wyckoff Plaza; all shows are at 4:30 except for August 7-8, which start at 2:00. Also joining in the “Summer of Joy” will be the People’s Bus, a community-led initiative that repurposes a retired NYC prisoner transport vehicle into a mobile center that provides “resources and education to restore and build trust in our democracy.”

CAESAR & CLEOPATRA

(photo by Carol Rosegg)

Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim) and Caesar (Robert Cuccioli) share an intimate moment in Gingold production (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Theatre Row, Theatre One
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 12, $69
gingoldgroup.org
www.theatrerow.org

Last week a friend of mine posted a photo on social media of his ridiculous view of the Gingold Theatrical Group’s presentation of Bernard Shaw’s Caesar & Cleopatra at Theatre Row; he was sitting behind a young man well over six feet tall, with a long neck, wide ears, and a topknot that added another six inches, blocking nearly two-thirds of the stage. My friend wasn’t missing much.

Written in 1898, Caesar and Cleopatra imagines a fictional meeting between Roman ruler Julius Caesar (Robert Cuccioli) and Egyptian queen Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim). Thirty years Cleopatra’s senior and far more versed in the ways of the world, Caesar is like Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. In fact, the play emerged out of an early draft of what would become Pygmalion. Caesar has arrived in Egypt ahead of his troops and at first does not believe that the young, whiny woman is who she claims to be; she doesn’t realize who he is as well. “Caesar’ll know that I’m a queen when he sees my crown and robes!” she declares. He responds, “He will know Cleopatra by her pride, her courage, her majesty, and her beauty.”

(photo by Carol Rosegg)

Politics takes center stage in Caesar & Cleopatra at Theatre Row (photo by Carol Rosegg)

But soon he is teaching her how to be a leader while she battles for control of Egypt against her brother, King Ptolemy, a puppet manipulated by his regent, Pothinus (Rajesh Bose). Caesar is joined by his humorless secretary, Britannus (Jonathan Hadley), and forthright military aide, Rufio (Jeff Applegate), while Cleopatra is nearly always accompanied by her mystical, protective nurse, Ftatateeta (Brenda Braxton). Later the dashing Apollodorus the Sicilian (Dan Domingues) devotes himself to her, but you’re unlikely to care by then.

Last year, Gingold turned the Lion Theatre into a London air-raid shelter during the Blitz for its scattershot version of Heartbreak House. The troupe is now back in the same space, renamed Theatre One after a renovation of Theatre Row, but they end up with the same unfortunate result. (Perhaps that specific room is doomed; I can’t remember the last time I saw something I liked in what was the Lion.) Director David Staller has done a deep dig into the history of the play, incorporating elements from letters, production notes, Shaw’s original handwritten manuscript, an early draft of the 1945 screenplay, and other sources, and perhaps that’s part of the problem; the show has no pace or rhythm. Brian Prather’s set is supposed to be an excavation site but looks more like unfinished scaffolding with plastic sheeting. It’s almost as if Staller, who has directed all of Shaw’s works, knows the play so well, and wanted to include so many unique touches, that he lost sight of the big picture. Cuccioli, as a smooth-talking superhero Caesar, and Lim, as a #metoo-era Cleopatra, never develop the necessary chemistry in choice parts previously played onstage and -screen by such pairs as Lionel Atwill and Helen Hayes, Cedric Hardwicke and Lilli Palmer, Hardwicke and Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains and Leigh, Alec Guinness and Geneviève Bujold, Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley, and Christopher Plummer and Nikki M. James. “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history,” Caesar says at one point. He’s more right about that than he realizes. If only “veni” and no “vidi”: Where was that tall guy with the topknot to block my view?

JUNK

(photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Ayad Akhtar and Doug Hughes shine a light on debt financing, leverage, disclosure violations, and the death of American manufacturing in Junk at Lincoln Center (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 7, $87-$147
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Just because I graduated from Wharton in the 1980s doesn’t mean I understand every intricacy in Ayad Akhtar’s complexly layered Junk, his sizzling-hot excoriation of greed and hostile takeovers, set in 1985. But Akhtar makes the key elements easy to follow, even for me, as a group of men fight it out for control of an Allegheny steel mill — but the last thing on their mind is actually steel, because in this world, it’s money that matters. Akhtar — who won the Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced, a sharp play about race, assimilation, ambition, and bigotry, and whose 2014 drama, The Invisible Hand, put capitalism and religion on trial in Pakistan — refers to Junk as “a ritual enactment of an origin myth,” in this case that of debt financing at the expense of American manufacturing. “When did money become the thing — the only thing?” journalist Judy Chen (Teresa Avia Lim) asks at the beginning. “It was like a new religion was being born.” It might not sound like a sexy topic, but it’s a scorcher in the hands of Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (The Father, Incognito), who orchestrates all the back-room dealings on John Lee Beatty’s dazzling multilevel set, strikingly lit by Ben Stanton. Sacker-Lowell junk bond trader Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale) is the mastermind behind a hostile takeover of Everson Steel and United, a family-owned business on the Dow. Merkin, who believes that “debt is an asset,” and Sacker-Lowell lawyer Raül Rivera (Matthew Saldivar), who claims that “nothing makes money like money,” are working with corporate raider Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch) to gain control of Everson Steel, owned by Thomas Everson Jr. (Rick Holmes), who desperately wants to hold on to the Allegheny-based firm founded by his father. Merkin turns to his wife, numbers whiz Amy (Miriam Silverman), for advice while luring in arbitrageur Boris Pronsky (Joey Slotnick) and investor Murray Lefkowitz (Ethan Phillips) to raise the necessary funds and manipulate the market. When old-time private equity magnate Leo Tresler (Michael Siberry) gets wind of Merkin’s plan, he decides to throw his hat in the ring as well. Meanwhile, US attorney Giuseppe Addesso (Charlie Semine) and assistant US attorney Kevin Walsh (Philip James Brannon) are operating behind the scenes, building a case against Merkin and others.

(photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Corporate raider Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch) colludes with junk bond trader Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale) in Broadway financial thriller (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

When Akhtar moved to New York City shortly after graduating from Brown, his father offered to pay his rent if he read the Wall Street Journal every day. He immersed himself in newspapers and magazines about business and came to believe that the players in this world were “not moral or immoral but amoral,” he tells co-executive editor John Guare in Lincoln Center Theater Review. In many ways Junk is like a Shakespearean history play about war, complete with lies, betrayal, spies, sex, and blood, where words and actions can be twisted to mean something else. Of course, Akhtar is not exactly the first person to write about how money became a kind of religion, with profit more important than product and people, humanity be damned, but he does so with a graceful style that turns clichés inside out while choosing no real heroes or villains. No one is safe from his skewer, but each man and woman gets to state his or her case free from editorial judgment. That doesn’t mean everyone is equal, that the audience can’t separate good from evil, or that viewers can’t feel sympathy for some characters and disdain for others. Akhtar reveals a socioeconomic level many of us will never be a part of, and most likely wouldn’t want to — although more than a few in the well-heeled Lincoln Center audience at the show we attended rustled uncomfortably in their seats. Talking about Merkin, Tresler tells Chen, “He’s a pawnbroker. And he’s got America in hock,” to which she replies, “Or he’s the new J. P. Morgan.” In many ways Akhtar has created an extremely extended dysfunctional family, with surrogate children, cousins, parents, and grandparents fighting over money, power, and values. “I don’t want to make you mad,” Lefkowitz tells Merkin, as if he doesn’t want to disappoint Daddy. Featuring a strong cast of twenty-three led by fine turns by Pasquale (The Bridges of Madison County, Rescue Me), Siberry (An Enemy of the People, Six Degrees of Separation), Phillips (My Favorite Year, Benson), Slotnick (Dying for It, Boston Public), and Holmes (The Visit, Matilda), Junk might be set thirty-two years ago, but it’s not out-of-date in the least, as income inequality grows around the world, President Trump has just signed a controversial overhaul of the US tax system, and cryptocurrency complicates the market and confuses the masses.