Weekly Margin 2026, W40: Anon, Burning Leaves, Degenerates, Slam Frank

9/30/26: Anon: A Tempest at Our Kitchen Table

What: MCC presents Anne Washburn's newest play. In a suburb of San Antonio, a middle aged gay couple moves into a neighborhood across  the street from a family whose matriarch is knee-deep in the QAnon conspiracy swamp. As paranoia grows in both households, a violent confrontation feels more and more inevitable under the flashing lightning and booming thunder of a gathering storm.

And? This is pretty great. The overlay of the teenage daughter's work with King Lear is perhaps not subtle, but it is consistently satisfying; and her discussion of the difference between a monologue and a soliloquy sheds a perspective on how broken down online discourse has become that I hadn't actually considered before. A soliloquy isn't a conversation, like a monologue can be. Neither is a screed on X or a conspiracy-laden TikTok. They're bellowing into a void or at an imagined audience. As act two opened, I did one of those knowing chuckles of "ah right, this is an Anne Washburn play," but don't want to spoil more than that. At the end of the play, well ... I didn't realize we were at the end of the play. But otherwise I thought it was pretty great theater.

dots's scenic design is an interestingly spare and liminal space: a long wooden kitchen table in a room bare of other furniture or any art on the wall. To either side of the room, half-behind a scrim are cardboard boxes, but the question remains if the families are moving in or moving out, or--in the case of Jeanie's family--never quite finished moving in a year later. The concept for Cha See's lighting design is less clear to me. The general illumination of the space is fine, but I was continually distracted by the columns of round lights framing the space, and the significance of which lights were lit at different times. I didn't manage to resolve this by the end of the production, but I'm assuming it didn't distract anyone who isn't the kind of nerd I am. Good cast all around, especially Crystal Finn as the strident Jeanie and Izabel Mar as her outspoken daughter.

Izabel Mar as Delia and Crystal Finn as Jeanie.
Photo by Monique Carboni.

10/01/26: Burning Leaves

What: TOSOS presents the world premiere of Tom Rowan's play about Matt, a former New York actor, seeks a new start as a high school drama teacher in a small town in Illinois. As he attempts to engage the children on local events by encouraging them to craft a devised docuplay about the question of a nuclear power plant being built in their dying factory town, he encounters Jesse, a troubled young student with acting potential but a strong resistance to engagement as he wrestles with his sexuality. 

And? full review here.

Foreground: Campbell Idol as Jesse. Background: Sophie
Tanabaum as Hallie, Becky Rusch as Alicia, and Brady Dalton
Richards as Matt. Photo by Mikiodo.

Margin Notes: Slam Frank

Slam Frank

Olivia Bernábe as Anita and Walker Stovall as
ASM. Photo by Shawn Salley Photography.

Seen on: Saturday, 10/03/26.

Plot and Background

Inspired by a viral tweet asking if Anne Frank ever acknowledged her white privilege, Joel Sinensky and Andrew Fox conceived Slam Frank: The Anne-Frank Afro-Latin Hip-Hop Musical. Following a hit run with Asylum NYC, the encore production comes to the Orpheum Theatre. The premise of this production is a progressive theater attempts to retell Anne Frank's story while including as many diverse identities as possible, from ethnicity to gender to sexuality to neurodiversity.

Thoughts:

Play: We open with the "Artistic Director" of a progressive theater company standing onstage to introduce the show, beginning with a land acknowledgment which stutters to a stop when he can't remember the name of the indigenous people who originally lived here. He then goes on to explain his attempt as a cis white male to make space for other identities to express themselves, and the audience is chuckling along, knowingly acknowledging the performative wokeness and over-correcting we are about to witness in longform. And then we're in it, with Anita--not Anne--rapping into a hand-held mic about writing in her diary.

As the show goes on, the various characters emerge as one marginalized identity or another--or many intersectional ones. Anita is a Latina teen told to repress her ethnic identity to be more commercial (even as the ghost of her Abuela encourages her to remember who she is). Edith, Anne's mother, is a proud Black woman in a bold African print dress, who continually breaks the fourth wall to remind us that this is happening "today"--both the today of 1944 but also the today of 2026. Otto, her husband, is every neurodiverse identity the writers can throw at the wall, while also a closeted homosexual. The family Van Daan, hiding in the attic with the Franks, consist of Mr. Van Daan, the cis white villain; Mrs. Van Daan, a repressed woman on a journey of self-actualization; and Peter, their child who comes out as nonbinary (this of course leads to Anita discovering this must mean she's pansexual). Peter's number, the enjoyable tuneful "Non-Binary," is a showstopper coming-out for all characters (except Mr. Van Daan and Margot--hang on, we'll get to her in a moment), featuring each ripping off their yellow stars in favor of stars with the flag colors for their respective identities, complete with pronouns. The show-within-a-show and its characters are so enamored of exploring these identities that the actual circumstances of the Franks and Van Daans hiding in an attic are forgotten: at one point a character brings up the Nazis, and Anita, bewildered, replies, "the what?" That's the point, though: the writers takes the deliberate approach of appropriating a story without addressing the real circumstances, à la Cole Escola's conscious decision to not do any research when writing O, Mary! (reinforced especially in Slam Frank by the mispronunciation of character names: the t in Margot shouldn't be silent, for example). The extent of that appropriation--taking a story explicitly about the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people and making it explicitly about anyone else (reducing Jewish people, as unfortunately is happening a lot right now, to "white Europeans")--reaches full expression with Anita's sister Margot. Margot is the only character remotely coded as Jewish: lighting Shabbat candles and wearing a scarf over her hair. She's also the only character who doesn't speak.

Margin Notes: Burning Leaves

Burning Leaves

Foreground: Campbell Idol as Jesse.
Background: Sophie Tananbaum as Hallie, 
Becky Rusch as Alicia, and Brady Dalton Richards
as Matt. Photo by Mikiodo.

Seen on: Thursday, 10/01/26.

Plot and Background

Matt, a former New York actor, seeks a new start as a high school drama teacher in a small town in Illinois. As he attempts to engage the children on local events by encouraging them to craft a devised docu-play about the question of a nuclear power plant being built in their dying factory town, he encounters Jesse, a troubled young student with acting potential but a strong resistance to engagement as he wrestles with his sexuality. 

Thoughts:

Play: Rowan's play is well-constructed with a strong line of tension powerfully carried by director Graydon Gund. The dialogue is unstilted and honest, and I care about each character onstage, their wants and needs, as well as their individual hang-ups. I spent the show genuinely concerned for how things would shake out, desperate for a happy ending, but aware of the warning signs that we were headed for trouble. Matt moves into a spare room in the high school counselor's house, and proceeds to help around the house (including raking and burning the titular leaves), inadvertently inciting a crush in the recently-divorced Jane. He continues to unconsciously stir pots when he eschews the idea of putting on a musical (to the intense frustration of student Alicia, who has been counting on landing a leading role as a senior), favoring instead scenes from Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, until he lands on the concept of the devised theater piece. And finally, in his biggest slip in judgement, he ignores the resistance of both counselor Jane as well as Jesse's hostile (and homophobic) father to encourage Jesse to pursue an acting career. Of course things will go badly. The best intentions, etc.

While Matt is, frankly, not a good teacher for a group of high schoolers still figuring out who they are, he is also simultaneously a good mentor for artists discovering their inner aptitudes: Hallie, the daughter of his landlord/school counselor Jane, shows an innate attunement for how to craft disparate elements from raw interviews into a coherent narrative. He recognizes (as does she) that though she is no actor, she can be a capable playwright (and, though they don't say it, a strong dramaturg). Jesse, meanwhile, demonstrates strong instincts with his connections to Hamlet's struggles, finding a way to externalize his own unspoken pain and fear. Where Matt falls short, continually, is in knowing how to balance his instincts of open vulnerability (no doubt a carryover from his time in the downtown New York theater space) with the boundaries needed to effectively teach teenagers without any lines being crossed. He's already off to a bad start by living in the spare room of the school counselor, which means cohabiting with one of his own students; but when his interest and kindness to Jesse spurs the teenage boy to not only come out to him but to also express his love for him, Matt completely fails to properly establish boundaries to protect not only the vulnerable child but also himself (for that matter, he should have immediately reported when Jesse confirmed his father beat him). Though it's clear he feels protective of Jesse and doesn't want to hurt him, what little he does to enforce boundaries is ineffective. It's also clear he understands on some level that what he's doing is wrong, hiding from Jane the full extent of their connection. Though he never crosses the physical boundary that would lead to actual molestation of a minor, his relationship to Jesse, with its inherent power dynamic and age gap, is not a safe environment for a vulnerable boy, especially when the shit hits the fan.

What follows, then, at least for this audience member, is both a lingering frustration with a deeply flawed protagonist, and a strong protective instinct for the teenage boy, hoping against hope that he will come out of all this safe and with the potential to lead a happy life.

Margin Notes 2026, W39: The Imaginary Invalid

9/27/26: The Imaginary Invalid

What: Roundabout revives Moliere's classic with a new adaptation by Bill Irwin (who also stars as the titular invalid). Argan believes he is perpetually ill, not realizing he is being bilked by his doctor. Desperate to get a doctor into the family, he tries to marry his daughter off, but she's already in love with someone else. Machinations, costume changes, and a happy ending for most!

And? A lot of fun. I'll admit to missing the rhyming couplets I'm used to for Moliere adaptations, but it's still very clever, and Bill Irwin is brilliant. Also making a good show for themselves are Rachel Bloom as wily servant Toinette, Dylan Baker as Argan's brother Beralde, Crystal A. Dickinson as Argan's melodramatic wife Beline, and the always scene-stealing Brooks Ashmanskas as both Drs Diafoirus and Purgon. The production might be worth it for the opening sequence alone, which is beautiful and well-crafted, bringing us from the world of masked comedy to today: though the costumes and setting remain "period," the dialogue is committed to contemporary inflection. We unfortunately had a snafu at our performance with a disruptive audience member, which led to them holding the show for about a half hour while it was resolved, but Irwin had an excellent sense of humor about it, nodding subtly to it the rest of the performance.

Margin Notes 2026, W38: The Cherry Orchard

9/16/26: The Cherry Orchard

What: Park Avenue Armory hosts the North American premiere of Chekhov's classic, as adapted by Simon Stone. This production moves the story from Russia  to Seoul, South Korea.

And? It's very visually striking (props to scenic designer Saul Kim), and I really appreciate the pared-down adaptation. I don't often have much patience for Chekhov, but this version worked well for me. It's a compelling study of nostalgia versus naked ambition, of stubborn denial versus practicality and cynicism, and of course of the changing mentalities around class structure. The cast is very strong, particularly Jeon Do-yeon as the dreamy and brittle Song Do-young (Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya) and Park Hae-soo as her foil, the practical and passionate Hwang Doo-sik (Yermolai Alexeievitch Lopakhin). As with Simon Stone's production of Yerma, this show faces a few aural challenges by placing its cast behind glass walls for so much of the show. They're all clearly miked, but the sound mix offers no assistance in locational listening: many times I wouldn't realize the primary dialogue scene had moved to a different room, because the sound was all coming from the same place. This, coupled with the need to read the supertitles, made following some scenes a particular challenge, especially early on and with overlapping scenes. I'm still very glad I saw it--some excellent work here.

The cast of The Cherry Orchard.
Photo by Studio AL, LG Arts Center.