What: The Public Theater presents John Leguizamo's newest piece, a family drama set in Forest Hills (Queens, NY to you out of towners) where the patriarch is struggling to balance his empire ambitions for his set of laundromats against the return of his deeply traumatized son, still processing a violent and racist attack in one of the family's laundromats.
And? My immediate thought is that it's Leguizamo's take on Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: a mediocre man who keeps waiting for the American Dream to bless him with the bounty he expects. The key difference for me is, Miller (or at least Loman's wife) think Willy Loman was a man who deserved more and didn't get it; Leguizamo sees Nelson's flaws more clearly: he has disappointed hopes, racism has definitely been an obstacle to his ambitions, but he is also a bad business man and a neglectful father. Nelson is responsible for his own ruin. It sucks, and you can see his charisma and why he's loved, but he's still the textbook tragic hero: a man who brings about his own destruction, and the destruction of his loved ones.
The other piece of my immediate thought, comparing this to Salesman, is that it's not my favorite kind of story. But that's okay.
Meanwhile, the craft of this production is truly excellent. Anyone who reads my blog knows how ornery I get when a director doesn't know how to activate a non-proscenium space. The Anspacher space at the Public is a three-quarter thrust stage, with the turns at right angles. I had a seat at the extreme end of one of the sides, and I swear director Ruben Santiago-Hudson crafted moments that were just for me to witness. That's how aware he is of every view in the space. Were there times I couldn't see what was going on? Yep, pretty much everything in the kitchen was hidden from view. But otherwise, I really did feel like I was getting a special experience. Scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado doesn't make it easy for Santiago-Hudson, but both of them accomplish wonders anyway, giving us powerful stage picture after stage picture.
So even if it's not my favorite kind of story, this was a truly excellent execution, from writing to staging to designing to acting.
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| Foreground: Rosa Evangelina Arredondo and John Leguizamo as Norma and Nelson. Background: Bradley James Tejeda, Luna Lauren Velez, and Rebecca Jimenez as Eddie, Patti, and Toni. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
9/17/25: Improvised Shakespeare
What: A ridiculously talented group of five players improvise an entire Shakespeare-style play, based on a title prompt from the audience.
And? "Beneath the Other Castle" was an absurdly funny tale of betrayal, bastards, and a baby. Because I'm approaching this as a theater-goer and not an improv maven, I always have the thought "I'd love to see this again." But that's not how improv shows work, Zelda. But I also know that the next time I see them perform will be just as absurd and hilarious.
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| (visible) Blaine Swen, Brendan Dowling, and Joey Bland carry Ross Bryant. (I assume Steve Waltien is the face we can't see). Photo source. |
9/18/25: Weather Girl
What: St. Ann's Warehouse presents a Francesco Moody Production of Brian Watkins's new play about a woman trying to fit the shape of the perky Fresno weather girl while also feeling the ache of the earth beneath her, manifesting in a wildfire taking over her city.
And? In his program note, playwright Brian Watkins notes the strange contradictions we perform as we watch the world literally and figuratively burn around us: "You go about life. You silence the alarms. The excess remains. The madness gets normal. As we've been told since the beginning, it's one thing to admire the Garden of Eden and quite another to consume it." This is the crisis facing Stacey. Is she consuming the ground beneath her feet? Is it consuming her? And what is it like to feel both destroyed by society and like Cassandra screaming into the wind, trying to save society from itself? What does it feel like to do that when you're not even trying to save yourself?
This is terrific theater. Fantastic writing by Watkins, performed to perfection by Julia McDermott, able to flip from TV persona to bewildered narrator to deeply broken soul on her last legs. The shifts are so subtle you don't always notice until you realize her voice has dropped a full octave from where it started. Lighting designer Isabella Byrd and sound designer Kieran Lucas do similarly subtle work in shaping the world around her: sometimes abrupt tonal shifts, sometimes subtle creepings up of the darkness lurking, the tendrils of fire licking at the periphery.
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| Julia McDermott as Stacey. Photo by Pamela Raith. |
9/19/25: When the Hurlyburly's Done (ЯК СТИХНЕ ШУРУ-БУРЯ ЗЛА)
What: The Public Theater and A Theater on Podil Production present a new play by Richard Nelson about the women of a Ukrainian theater troupe in 1930.
And? This has all the wonderful hallmarks of a Richard Nelson play (wonderful if you love his plays, which I do): the act of preparing food and enjoying it, conversation about ideas without a conventional plot--just characters slowly unpacking topics--and a moment of art appreciation (in this case, a dance from their production of Macbeth, and then a solo piece by the choreographer. Overlaying all of this are the fears of the danger of war and of Russian aggression. Performed entirely in Ukrainian (with English supertitles) and taking place a century ago, this is a departure from Nelson's concluded Rhinebeck plays, which take place on the night the run begins, but this play somehow feels just as immediate. The conversations they had then about Russia's aggression toward Ukraine remain heartbreakingly current even now: this play, metatheatrically, is six women putting on a play during a war about six women putting on a play during a war. As the play draws toward an end, we are told the future of each woman present, with very few of them ending well. We can hope the six actors before us have better lives that the women they portray.
You have to be in the right mood, but when you are, Nelson's plays feel like a gift: a private glimpse through the window of someone else's life on what they might call an ordinary evening. They gather to prepare a communal meal, talking as they slice vegetables, as they set the table, as they eat, as they fill each other's glasses. Nelson's plays are always that--a coming together of people who love each other even through their differences and are able to discuss them. I'm having a really good theater month, because I loved this one, too.
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| Yulia Brusentseva as Vira Onatska performing the Witches' dance. Photo source. |
9/20/25: Crooked Cross
What: Mint Theater Company presents Sally Carson's prescient play about a family in Bavaria's encounter with both Nazis and Jewish people in 1932.
And? This is an interesting piece of history, playwright and novelist Carson seeing with clarity the danger the Nazis posed to society and to Jews especially, before their intentions beyond the borders of Germany became clear. Unfortunately as written and performed it's a bit stiff, so when you see where it's going with the clear eyes of an audience watching a Greek Tragedy, you start to get impatient for them to catch up to you. Still, I'm grateful for the Mint and its mission to rescue lost and unpublished plays from obscurity.
It's definitely been getting more unpleasantly crowded in recent years, which is too bad but won't overwrite my happy memories of Flea Markets past: taking a picture of Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez at the Avenue Q booth, getting to meet Harvey Evans, finding a framed window card from Version 1 of The Scarlet Pimpernel signed by the whole cast (including the not-yet-famous Sutton Foster and Casey Nicholaw), and so many art pieces I still have on display in my apartment. Or the years Lauren and I would play the ticket game, buying one dollar raffles, getting mystery envelopes of tickets, and then reselling the popular ones we weren't interested in to make our money back (while seeing the shows we were interested in, like Promises Promises). Even so, this year, I got a few modest gems: framed card for Follies, caricature from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Playbills for Kiss Me, Kate starring Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and Talley's Folly. Plus kitty crack from the Lion King booth, like I get every year.
Special note: the Follies card is from the 1990 Long Beach Civic Light Opera production, where Harvey Evans, original Young Buddy in the OBC of Follies, returned to the role of Buddy, now in the principal role.
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| This year's haul. Photo by Zelda Knapp. |
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