Weekly Margin 2024, W39: The Counter, Fatherland

 9/24/24: The Counter

What: Roundabout presents Meghan Kennedy's new play about a waitress in a small-town cafe, her regular morning customer, and the bargain the two strike.

And? This was lovely. I clocked a number of Chekhov's guns being placed strategically through the character piece, sure we were headed for heartbreak. And then, out of the foggy morning--hope. Such a small gift, hope. Such an important gift. The cast is very well directed by David Cromer (though that's not a surprise), but I want to specifically highlight the subtle work of sound designer Christopher Darbassie: the ambient noise is so subtle you don't even realize it's going until it will fully cut out for these hidden monologues delivered in utter stillness of sound. Remarkable moments. So glad I saw this. I needed a taste of hope.

9/25/24: Fatherland

What: City Center hosts Stephen Sachs's docuplay about a young man who turns his father in for his participation in the January 6th insurrection, told verbatim from public statements, transcripts, and evidence.

And? Eh. It didn't do enough to lift it out of just being a re-enactment of his court testament. Thanks to Tectonic, Anna Deavere Smith, the Civilians, and the recent verbatim plays from the Vineyard, the bar's pretty high for what kind of transformative work you can do, even using pre-set words.

Ron Bottitta and Patrick Keleher as Father and Son. Photo by Maria
Baranova.

Weekly Margin 2024, W38: Safety Not Guaranteed, Yellow Face, The Very Hungry Caterpillar

9/18/24: Safety Not Guaranteed

What: BAM presents the world premiere of a new musical adaptation of the 2012 film, as part of their Next Wave 2024 & Emerging Visions series.

And? It's possible there's a good show underneath this. I can't tell right now. Even at just under two hours, the show feels overlong. I don't think it's currently well-staged, or particularly well-designed (except maybe Sarita Fellows's costume design), and whoever was in the booth the night I saw it rarely managed to turn performers' mics on in time for their dialog (granted, I saw the second preview, so hopefully this will improve). I also couldn't hear a lot of the lyrics over the the sound of the onstage band. Devotees of this blog will know how ornery I get about the misuse of a thrust stage. BAM Harvey has a lovely curving stage, with an equally curving audience hugging it. Why, then did I keep seeing crew members idling in the wings or pre-setting set pieces ten minutes before the next scene transition? Hide your crew, my dudes. No matter what kind of staging you're directing--proscenium, thrust, alley, arena, immersive--I think it is an absolute failure of directing craft to not spend rehearsals constantly moving through the entire range of where the audience will be, to make sure that everyone has a dynamic and interesting stage picture. If you sit dead center, you're ensuring a good view for fifteen people.

Also, I was under the impression this show was featuring an entirely new score by Ryan Miller (lead singer for the band Guster). So my jaw dropped when, at the eleven o' clock confrontation number, the two leads started belting out "Two Points For Honesty." My entire self flashed back to teenage me listening to a mixtape from my friend Malcolm.

Just. What?

9/20/24: Yellow Face

What: Roundabout's Broadway production of David Henry Hwang's semiautobiographical matryoshka doll of a play.

And? I think if it were just the riff on inadvertently casting a white character in an Asian role, and then that actor adopting that stolen identity to then become an activist, the play might have gotten tired, but DHH manages to spin some fascinating twist and foils within the play, confronting his own conflicted feelings about his own activism, as well as his imposter syndrome. Solid, great work all around, and a brilliant way to recover the lost work of his flop play, Face Value.

Weekly Margin 2024, W37: A Meal, Our Class

 9/13/24: A Meal

What: HERE Arts presents LEIMAY's immersive installation meal slash performance experience.

And? Throughout the three-hour evening, I keep re-evaulating what space I think I'm in, what world I'm witnessing. The preshow is ritualistic and features mason jars of the best tasting tea I've ever had (if all tea tasted like this, I might actually like tea). Then there is the singing by the two cantors and the slow but deliberate movement of the rest of the cast as they condition the space and build the first table. Then the audience group is split and escorted to different parts of the transformed space--for A Meal inhabits not just the ground floor mainstage space, but also the lobby and smaller black box theater below. Here there are more installations in isolated spots of light, and projections, and performers so still they might be statues. Here there is both the grotesquerie of food preparation and the loving care of building a meal. Here there is a commentary on limits of resources, on accumulations of waste. Here there is also a tray of sushi and an arepa cart, and a vendor singing of his wares.

It's a lot. It's many things. The costume design is flowing and sharp. The sound baths--a combination of recorded sound and the voices of the cantors--are hypnotic and lovely. It's a bit too long. But I'm glad I went.

9/14/24: Our Class

What: Classic Stage Company hosts the Manhattan transfer of the production that ran at BAM last year.

And? a repeat visit of a show that remains mostly intact from its last iteration. Still disturbing, still worth seeing, and still with audience members so unnerved they leave midshow. When I saw it last time I went with a gentile friend who was so shocked at the content of the show, that people would do this to their own neighbors and former friends. I, who have long known the history of pogroms, had no words to lighten the weight of that knowledge for her. This time, I went with a Jewish friend, who remarked with angry passion (I paraphrase), "It's not just a history play, this is what's happening now, here, in America, with lies being told about immigrants, with attacks in the streets. This play is about 2024." It's both, of course. That's how good art works. Maybe the actual goal is to not let ourselves becomes resigned to the monstrosity of humankind, but to keep being appalled, so we do not normalize the monstrous. We cannot afford to keep dehumanizing other humans. We're all we've got.

Stephen Ochsner as Jakub Katz. Photo by Pavel
Antonov.

Weekly Margin 2024, W33: Oh, Mary!, Life and Trust

8/13/24: Oh, Mary!

What: Cole Escola's irreverent play about Mary Todd Lincoln.

And? There's definite talent onstage, but the show isn't for me. I don't like queerness, addiction, or mental illness being treated as punchlines. I also don't like being twenty minutes ahead of the play in terms of plot twists.

Cole Escola as Mary. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

8/17/24: Life and Trust

What: Emursive Productions's newest venture, an immersive promenade adaptation of Faust.

And? It's taken me a long while to finally do my write up of this. That's largely due to Personal Zelda Stuff, but it's partly due to my struggle to wrap my head around this production. Which isn't necessarily a complaint. If there's one word to describe Life and Trust, it's ambitious. The space in the Financial District they've built is stunning in scope: opulent and expansive, with high Deco ceilings and that sense of giddy excess right before the stock market crash of 1929. This production features a different sort of prologue to Sleep No More: a visit with banker Conwell on the eve of the collapse of his empire, before we travel back in time to see his rise when he was a young man eager to make his deal with the devil. Then for the next few hours we are in the type of immersive experience we may remember from Sleep No More. And yet it is not like that. At Sleep No More I described the experience as wandering through someone else's nightmares. But at the same time, I had enough of a grip on the story of Macbeth to be able to place myself within the narratives I followed. I knew where I was. 

Here, for the most part, I did not. Part of that was because I deliberately was not following young Conwall, as he tended to have the biggest crowd chasing him (I'm a different person now than the Zelda who was able to be at the front of the crowds following Macbeth or Boy Witch. 2020 has made me crowd averse in general. What's also true is that audiences for immersive shows have changed considerably since Sleep No More first arrived in New York. Everyone is savvy now, and everyone is vying for the front of the pack. It's exhausting.). I spent my evening following characters who seemed to have less of a crowd chasing them. If the crowd increased, rather than fight for a spot, I would wander off to another area. This is where I really want to compliment the designers' ambitions. There are so many different environments and worlds in this space, so many places to explore. Hidden pathways behind curtains, strange nooks and installations--I didn't mind that I was often on my own.

However, I will say that this strategy left me ready for the evening to end ahead of its actual ending. If I had been more aggressive about following characters, this might not be true. As for the characters I did follow? I have no idea who any of them were. Truly. At sea, me.

My big complaint though I must reserve for the grand finale (not part of the cycle). It's a shallower space than the ballroom at the McKittrick, and the central platform is not raised enough to accommodate for this. All this to say, I was too short to see what was going on on the central platform, and looked at the side platforms instead. So there was probably more story here I missed as well. Alas.

 Another sign of the ambitious nature of this production is in the expansion of what is asked of the performers. The athletic dancing and melancholy speechless performances continue here, but they are further enhanced with acrobatics and a bit of illusion magic (escapes and teleportations). Oh, and that player piano! I loved it.

Will I go see this ten or more times, as I did with Sleep No More? Probably not. The tickets are double the cost of what they were back then, and I'm not as fascinatedly in love with it as I was then. But I'm glad I saw it, and it is worth experiencing.

The cast of Life and Trust. Photo by Jane Kratochvil.

Weekly Margin 2024, W36: See What I Wanna See

 9/05/24: See What I Wanna See

What: Out of the Box Theatrics presents Michael John LaChiusa's musical adaptation of three stories by Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Act one is a riff on "Rashomon," transporting the events to New York in 1951. Act two follows a disillusioned priest in the aftermath of 9/11, fabricating a miracle with astonishing results.

And? What a fantastic show. I'd gotten the cast album for the Original Off-Broadway Cast years ago and listened to it, but out of context it was a hard-to-follow album. Now I can't wait to go back and really listen to and enjoy LaChiusa's muscular score. This show circles around the idea of truth, and if and when it matters for truth to be known. In act one, the audience is never granted a definitive version of the "truth" of what happened that night, with three different people claiming responsibility for a death; but one could theoretically parse something out of each character's testimony to see what could be real. In act two, the final truth is one that only the Priest knows. Does it matter that no one else knows, if it regains him his faith? But then again, doesn't Christian faith by definition not require proof? (asking as a heathen).

Truly marvelous cast for this chamber musical, which has been reconfigured with a cast of AAPI performers to reclaim its Japanese lens, including the use of both Bunraku and shadow puppets. It's hard to pick a standout when everyone is so good, but I'm going to do it anyway: Ann Sanders is a national treasure and it's time everyone acknowledged it.