#240414 - APRIL in Review, Part 1.
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for April 14, 2024
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my irregular newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
This installment of #TheatreClique brings the latest installment of my ongoing experiment in theatre commentary. And to begin, I lift this “behind the scenes” glimpse into scenic designer and multi-media artist Steven Dufala’s process crafting the “found materials” set for the Wilma production of The Good Person of Setzuan, which happens to be among the productions I discuss below…
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever linking to paywalled pieces, I “gift” the article to #TheatreClique readers. In other words, clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your monthly allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! hi ChicaoTribune! yo NewYorker!— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...
In Review : April 1-14, 2024.
Capturing brief “capsule” commentaries on my recent theatregoing, with click-worthy links to others writing about the same shows or theatremakers.
TRAVELS
Book, Music and Lyrics by James Harrison Monaco. Directed by Andrew Scoville • Off Broadway • Ars Nova (NYC) • April 2024.
A "sonic narrative collection" of eight story-songs written by James Harrison Monaco that, in constellation, ponder the question of global dislocation as witnessed by a white, straight, American man who has the privilege to "travel" (as per the title). The narrator is singular — this one white American guy — but “his” stories are collectively held (and envoiced) by a multiracial, multigendered ensemble — El Beh, Ashley De La Rosa, Mehry Eslaminia — comprised of thrillingly gifted singers and storytellers. Monaco’s stories detail the myriad ways violence becomes a fact of existence amidst, by turns, the political instability of the Middle East and economic precarity of Latin America as they are sung atop electronic dance beats and punctuated by pulsingly immersive club lights. This sensory dissonance between style and content creates an overarching affect that is as immersive and entrancing as it is disorienting. Perhaps notably, the embodied presence of exceptionally charismatic women/genderqueer performers inside Monaco’s narration also complicates the whiteness/maleness of Monaco’s travels in particular ways. Travels is beautifully executed, intensely thoughtful, and artfully constructed, but I can't shake the feeling that there’s a measure of deflection going on around the question of “how does a white American guy tell these stories?” Monaco — in collaboration with the contributions of director Andrew Scoville — found an undeniably artful and unimpeachably sincere way to do so but I do wonder what my response would have been if Travels had been performed “solo” as in the first scene. Captivating and interesting stories dazzlingly performed by an exceptionally charismatic ensemble, with the James Harrison Monaco adopting — creating? — the role of playwright-deejay for an innovatively intercultural storytelling event.
see also…
at Transitions, culture writer/critic Joey Sims talks to the Travels team for context on how they built a “listening bar for a sonic odyssey” at ArsNova;
Lighting and Sound America’s David Barbour appreciate how Travels’s “hard-to-define format and relatively unknown writer and cast… take you on a pleasure-filled excursion that will give you plenty to think about.”
THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CAESAR
Adapted and Directed by Eric Tucker (from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare and Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw) • Off Broadway • Bedlam at West End Theatre (NYC) • April 2024.
An ambitiously adventurous twining of two very different dramatizations of the Caesar story — Shakespeare's (tragic) tale of corruption, loyalty, and power and GBShaw's (more wry) treatise on the stupidity of vengeance — all staged within a metatheatrical rumination on the operation of power, intimacy, and ego within the theatre-making process. The formidable skills of the Bedlam ensemble deftly activate the three overlain narratives and, by so nesting these distinct plays within each other, director/adaptor Eric Tucker’s script does open some genuinely compelling questions around the operation of power within putatively collaborative modes of decision-making — like, say, governing and theatremaking. But the unrelenting swapping of roles, narratives, and styles quickly begins to feel a bit like an elaborately theatrical version of three-card monte. Once I stopped trying to make sense of things and just settled in for the ride, I did find my keenest attention invested in the Shaw excerpts (especially Rajesh Bose’s delicious handling of the Ra monologues) and some of the more unruly experiments (like the oddly gratifying if completely incongruous enactment of a Shakespeare sequence in “American mafia movie” style). But the mismatch of heightened language and seemingly unrehearsed stage chaos felt more like an early preview than the next-to-last performance of a six-week run.
see also…
at The Bookfish, scholar/critic Steven Mentz reflects on Bedlam’s production reminds us how “stories about the violent birth of the Roman Empire are always allegories of authority”;
at Woman about Town, freelance critic Alix Cohen warns that “at least a passing acquaintance with both plays and preferably more is necessary” but insists “you’re in for a helluva good time.”
THE GOOD PERSON OF SETZUAN
Written by Bertolt Brecht. Adapted by Tony Kushner from a translation by Wendy Arons. With additional translations by Ariel Wong, Mel Hsu, Bi Jean Ngo, and JungWoong Kim • Directed by Justin Jain. • Regional (Philadelphia) • Wilma Theater • April 2024.
Perhaps the most effectively Brechtian production of Brecht play I may have yet encountered in four decades of theatregoing. A smart, challenging, stirring, haunting, complex, and — yes — epic staging of Brecht’s critical parable of the good-hearted prostitute working in an environment of extreme poverty, craven corruption, and the vortex of debt/credit, all vividly layered within a framework of colonial extraction. As Shen Te (and Shui Ta), Bi Jean Ngo was just kinda totally amazing — a kindly eye within a chaotically craven storm — as was the astonishingly skilled (and charismatic) ensemble of eight actors and two musicians embodying the boldly physical stylization necessary to infuse both comedy and tragedy into the horror of this story of a good person trying to help others in a self-seeking, self-serving world (i.e. capitalism). Director Justin Jain smartly stages each of the play’s many episodes, interludes, and recurring threads with a distinctive stylization, often crafted with reference to traditional or popular Asian performances traditions. Among the most compelling: Wang the Water Carrier — performed by experimental dancer Jungwoong Kim — who speaks entirely in Korean and is then "dubbed" into English by a rotating constellation of different non-Asian members of the acting ensemble speaking, their faces variously visible as they peered around the edge of this or that set-piece. Sound Designer Eugene Lew’s vocal mix allows us to hear Kim speaking clearly even as the English-language overdub can be heard at a slightly louder volume. This dubbing device proves stealthily profound: anchoring the abiding Asiannesss of Jain’s staging, while amplifying the production’s overarching critique of the colonialist frame, all while also disaggregating actor and role. With a running time of nearly four hours, Wilma’s Good Person does prove a somewhat arduous journey (about 1/3 of our audience abandoned ship at intermission) that artfully delivers a deeply rewarding encounter with this fascinating, complicated, and moving play. NOTE: a filmed version of Wilma’s Good Person of Setzuan will be available for digital streaming from April 22 – May 21.
see also…
at Philadelphia Gay News, freelance writer/editor Liz Declan talks to director Justin Jain about his vision for Wilma’s Good Person of Setzuan;
WHYY’s arts/culture reporter Peter Crimmins explores how Wilma’s Good Person deploys a “hodge-podge of Asian cultural references to spoof audience awareness” and Broad Street Review contributor Mina Reinckens considers the implications of “Jain’s setting [as a] melting pot (or salad bowl?) of pan-Asian cultures.”
LEMPICKA
Book, Lyrics and Original Concept by Carson Kreitzer • Book and Music by Matt Gould • Directed by.Rachel Chavkin • Broadway • Longacre Theatre • April 2024.
Perhaps the first great queer, feminist, antifascist musical about bisexuality, polyamory, and artistic resilience...at least on Broadway...this season. I honestly can’t think of another musical about a bisexual woman artist that is truly about her being bisexual and a woman and an artist. My TDF seats were terrible (front orchestra, nearly against the wall, totally obscuring my view for most of the upper left third of the stage) so I struggled to connect to the visual sweep and swirl of the first act's expository emphasis on the shifting tides of world events. But once the second act got rolling, the show’s activating question — “what does it mean to outlive your context?”— connected quite vividly because of the ways Lempicka asks its audience to take seriously how the 1920s/1930s might be historically analogous to today — perhaps especially around the shift from legacy forms of genteel political domination to new forms of fascistic autocracy, around how newly expansive opportunities for gender and sexual freedom are met by backlash and brutality... Lempicka is fundamentally an experimental musical produced in full Broadway style and, even though the biomusical format doesn't allow Lempicka herself to become the most compelling character, Eden Espinosa's performance makes her an undeniable (if often unlikable) force of spirit, of tenacity, of artistry, of feeling. In seemingly simply yet quite haunting ways, Raja Feather Kelly's choreography — with its clearly angular yet curved movement vocabulary — glides the ensemble into and out of very different characters and contexts, while also deftly evoking not only the visual tropes of Lempicka's paintings but also those of ArtDeco more generally, as well as period graphic design, cabaret, futurism, fascism, etcetera. Among the stacked cast (including Beth Leavel, whose late solo song may well have guaranteed Tony attention in any other season), George Abud probably impressed me the most; Abud’s Marinetti is by turns clownish and monstrous, but always peculiarly human, which makes his turn to fascism oddly plausible yet utterly terrifying. (See Abud do his thing here, in Act2’s “Perfection.”) All told, Lempicka is one of those rare musicals that I didn’t much like at the end of Act1 but which I grew to kinda adore by the end of Act2. Here’s hoping it lasts through June so I can see it again with an audience full of out-of-towners in for Pride.
see also…
The New York Times’s Alexis Soloski details how the life, work, and legacy of Tamara Lempicka is simultaneously being revisited onstage and in the art world; genesis, development and production https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/theater/
EntertainmentWeekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker talks to the Lempicka designers Riccardo Hernandez and Paloma Young about how Madonna and fascism inspired the production’s set and costume design; ”
in Vogue, theatre critic/writer Juan A. Ramírez talks to star Eden Espinosa and, at Elle, writer/editor Samuel Maude explores how Lempicka is making room for a new kind of character on Broadway.
GRIEF HOTEL
Written by Liza Birkenheimer • Directed by.Tara Ahmedinejad • Off-Broadway • ClubbedThumb at ThePublicTheater: Shiva Theater • April 2024.
This remount of Liza Birkenheimer’s play, as directed by Tara Ahmedinejad — an Obie-recognized collaboration — is perhaps the perfect distillation of why ClubbedThumb pinches all of my theatrical pleasure points. (full disclosure: I serve on ClubbedThumb’s board.) Grief Hotel is funny, strange, and provocative (definitely an unusual story unusually told) performed by an extraordinarily gifted ensemble of New York actors in a way that stirs my brain and my heart, elicits my giggles and occasional gasps, and activates my curiosity and imagination. The play maps the quirky constellation of intimacies emanating from longtime friends (and possibly sometime lovers) Em and Wynn — Nadine Malouf and Ana Nogueira — whose deep connection traces back to high school and to a shared traumatic event. It's a deftly-plotted play, even though it seems like nothing is happening, that distills a brief sequence of weeks when two new tragedies (one involving a long ago school friend, the other having to do with Wynn's new lover) stir the enduring reality of each character’s prior traumas amidst their ongoing experiences of losses large and small. Tethering all of these folks together is Aunt Bobbi (Susan Blommaert, in a thrillingly heart-centered performance of matter-of-fact practicality) — who, for reasons that remain a bit unclear to me, is pitching her idea for a new line of luxury bespoke experiences that might attract millennials back to hotels. Her idea is a "Grief Hotel" which will stop time in a way and allow folks a week or two to just be in themselves to process what they need to process. Birkenheimer’s extraordinary language captures a cultural moment where texts and DMs sit alongside everyday chatter to create parallel channels for intimately banal communication and Ahmedinejad’s intricately precise direction of the gifted ensemble captures how these many simultaneous conversations are (and are not) adequate to their emotional realities. I saw the production in last summer’s Summerworks and in this year’s remount at The Public and, in each encounter, the play’s final word — spoken by Bloemaert in a manner so potent, so powerful, so lovely — simply took my breath way.
see also…
critic/director Sara Holdren’s illuminating review at Vulture;
at New York Stage Review, theatre writer/critic Melissa Rose Bernardo’s issues a “Kleenex warning” in anticipation of the “the massive wave of emotion you’ll experience” at Grief Hotel.
MACBETH (AN UNDOING)
Written by Zinnie Harris after William Shakespeare • Directed by Zinnie Harris • Off-Broadway (Brooklyn) • Theatre for a New Audience • April 2024.
This entry into the theatrical metaverse — written and directed by Zinnie Harris — reimagines Shakespeare’s Macbeth to take place in early twentieth century Scotland while also interpolating new dialogue and new scenes (scripted by Harris) that re-center the story on the ambitions and relationships of Lady Macbeth (Nicole Cooper). As ever, the most compelling thread of the production, for me, was the elaboration of the three weird sisters and the world/s they inhabit or haunt. Here, this includes an extended curtain speech (before both of two acts) by Liz Kettle as a character named Carlin. Kettle's clarity and ease maneuvering the transitions between characters — to witch to house servant to narrator — gave me perhaps the most confidence in the overlain conceits of Harris’s play, which scholar Tanya Pollard describes in a program note as "a looking-glass version” of Macbeth. It remains less than clear to me how Harris’s elaboration of the familiar story wants us to balance the interplay of grief/madness, power/ambition, and fate/destiny and, by the end, I found myself lapsing in and out of engagement with the recalibrated story. (There was also a whole meta-theatrical thread commenting on the apparatus of the theatre — with LadyM calling out the fact that this was all staged, an elaborate production — which did seem to loop into the question of fate/destiny and how much you can manipulate either before getting in trouble…maybe?) All told, an often shockingly beautiful production of an intermittently engaging narrative experiment that invites us to see what happens when Lady Macbeth seizes the center of this oft-told story.
see also…
in TFANA’s Viewfinder, scholar/critic Tanya Pollard considers how Zinnie Harris’s play invites its audience to wonder what might happen if Shakespeare’s glancing glimpse of female fury were allowed to linger and even to grow;
The New York Sun’s Elysa Gardner parses the production’s “bleak charm.”
IBSEN’S GHOST
Written by and Starring Charles Busch• Directed by Carl Andress • Off-Broadway (NYC) • Primary Stages at 59E59 • April 2024.
A starry reverie in the distinctive mode of legendary writer/performer Charles Busch. (An aside: Busch’s recent memoir — Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy — is a dishy delicious treat that I highly recommend.) The scenario of Ibsen’s Ghost is simple: revered playwright Henrik Ibsen's widow Suzannah must confront her lapsed sense of personal purpose and satisfaction when one of her husband's acolytes returns to insist that she (not Suzannah) inspired the character of Nora. Somehow — thanks to Busch's script and the game commitment of his starry cast — madcap hilarity ensues. In its way, the play is a softly feminist parable that places women characters at the center of a story about artistic autonomy, personal fulfillment, and erotic agency. The characters feel borrowed from the Ibsen ouevre (including one poached directly from Little Eyolf) and are — to a one — deliciously ridiculous, in every theatrical sense of the term. Busch's Suzannah is shallow, egocentric, craven, and vicious yet somehow she’s also the warm-hearted center of the show. As testament to Busch’s generosity as a writer, Busch gives lushly comedic (or at least ridiculous) arias to each of his characters, allowing every actor to have a grand old time doing their big speech while also (thanks to the confident directorial hand of Carl Andress) giving everyone else loads of material to react to with (ridiculous) verve. (Indeed, the "reactions" — especially from Busch — get as many laughs as the speeches do.) The most compelling character and most thrilling performance was Jennifer Van Dyck’s as Hanna Solberg.— Busch's riff on Laura Kieler, the Ibsen acolyte whose life story was allegedly poached by Ibsen for A Doll's House and who went on to become a novelist/playwright in her own right. Van Dyck's Hanna is a brilliant theatrical concoction, huge in both character and characterization, scripted with grand flourish (and attired in gorgeous detail by Gregory Gale), who absolutely earns every bit of exit applause she receives. The play twirls through any number of plot twists and reversals — with a bawdy sense of naughtiness infused throughout — before resolving into a slow-fade portrait of a happily vengeful collaboration among the women left to live in the shadow of the ostensibly great (but now quite dead) man. A crowd-pleasing, surprisingly tender goof of a play that is as smart and artfully crafted as it is utterly ridiculous.
see also…
at EDGE Media, critic Frank J. Avella talks to director Carl Andress about his “almost three-decade collaboration with Charles Busch”;
at Queerty, writer/editor Matthew Wexler chats with writer/performer Charles Busch about “his drag inspiration, onstage mishaps, and what it’s like living in the original heart of queer New York City.”