October 7: A Verbatim Play by Phelim McAleers depicts events in the Gaza Envelope of southwest Israel on the day of last year’s attack by the Islamist organization Hamas. It’s based on interviews conducted by McAleers and his wife, journalist-filmmaker Ann McElhinnie, immediately after the siege that reportedly killed 1,200 people, wounded an estimated 5,400, and resulted in seizure by Hamas of more than 250 hostages. In a May 7 speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, President Joe Biden lamented that, eight months after the assault (and despite ongoing warfare in Israel and Gaza), “people are already forgetting” the brutality of that day. McAleer’s play is agitprop against forgetfulness, burning a sense of the day’s agony into playgoers’ imaginations.
It’s I’m Not Rappaport meets Waiting for Godot meets The Gin Game! Take two old codgers on a park bench, combine with existential meanderings in a fixed setting, season with the ravages of aging, and you have Just Another Day, Dan Lauria’s uncertain reflection on all three components (but especially the third). Just Another Day suffers from being too much—well, just another day. Nothing terribly dramatic happens, and a great deal of curiously multisyllabic palaver fills out the hour and 45 minutes, including intermission. But it does have two actors very much worth seeing, for Lauria has cast himself, and opposite him, a flawless Patty McCormack.
Summer means free theater in New York, and Molière in the Park, an organization co-founded by Lucie Tiberghien and Garth Belcon. The Miser becomes the third free production at LeFrak Center, following The Misanthrope (2022) and Tartuffe (2023). Directed by Tiberghien, it’s an invigorating new version of the French playwright’s 1668 satire.
Boundaries of all types are tested in Ronnie Larsen’s comedic and big-hearted family chronicle, The Actors. The line between Democrat and Republican is pulled taut, as is the division between atheist and religious believer. But those are relatively minor concerns for the playwright. More to the point are the boundaries of grief and how to break through them, the borders of what constitutes a family, and what limits stage actors might burst through when their roles take over their lives. As farcical as it is melancholy, there are as many surprise door knocks in the play’s two acts and two hours as there are woeful revelations.
Near the end of the Barry Manilow musical Harmony, the surviving Comedian Harmonist Ari Leschnikoff, “a Bulgarian singing waiter” who survived the Holocaust to return to his home country, brags to a rabbi: “We saved them, Rabbi! Every Jewish person in Bulgaria! We wouldn’t let them have them! Not one!” This startling declaration, which demanded elaboration, is the foundation of The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria. The story of Boris III might have remained a historical footnote but for Sasha Wilson, the cowriter of the piece (with Joseph Cullen), whose grandparents escaped Bulgaria during World War II. It turns out that the history of Bulgaria in the 20th century is far more complicated than the Harmony passage suggests.
On Set with Theda Bara is a single-actor comedy-drama by Joey Merlo that revolves around the suspicious disappearance of a genderqueer teenager. In this pastiche of film noir, Merlo piles mystery upon outlandish mystery, and David Greenspan leads the spectators (limited to 50 a performance) through a 65-minute, mazelike tale that’s at once intriguing and mystifying.
Fiasco Theater, in a joint production with Red Bull Theater, takes on Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was a flop when it premiered in 1607. Though it has been occasionally revived, the play is mostly of scholarly interest: Beaumont is best-known for his collaborations with John Fletcher, who succeeded Shakespeare as writer-in-residence of the King’s Men, but The Knight of the Burning Pestle is Beaumont’s only play written alone. If the comedy doesn’t offer up the richness or complexity of Shakespeare, Fiasco is clearly drawn to its story of topsy-turvy community-building through theater.
The anonymously written 1592 play Arden of Faversham is just the sort of thing that Red Bull Theater specializes in: plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries that have been overshadowed by the Bard. But even the best of Shakespeare needs pruning, and Arden has received a new adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kathryn Walat for artistic director Jesse Berger’s production. The result is a mixed bag: necessary condensation of characters and cutting obscure lines, but also some wholesale rewriting.
Colin Quinn, the Brooklyn-born comedian and former anchor of “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, recently explained in a radio interview that his stand-up routines are designed to satisfy his curiosity about “how people become the way they become.” In his new Off-Broadway show, Colin Quinn: Small Talk, the 63-year-old writer-performer focuses his comedic gaze on Americans bewitched by the Internet and ponders the extent to which their online activities affect society at large.
The programs handed out at Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City, produced by New York Theatre Workshop and presented at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, note that they have been “frozen in time”: they were printed for the play’s original run, which began in March 2020, and are now accompanied by a QR code providing updated information. This new information includes a remount director, Caitlin Sullivan, in addition to the original direction by Rebecca Frecknall.
Matt Williams’s Fear, presented by Cherry Lane Theatre and running at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, begins with Phil (Enrico Colantoni) dragging 15-year-old Jamie (Alexander Garfin) on stage in a stranglehold. “Why were you at the lake?” Phil demands, in the abandoned tool shed where he takes his prisoner (scenic design by Andrew Boyce). At its best, Fear, soundly directed by Tea Alagić, is propelled by mystery and frayed nerves, with the potential for violence looming. The confrontation is not just between Phil and Jamie, but soon Ethan (Obi Abili) stumbles upon the unusual scene—with Jamie now tied to a chair—and the story of a missing girl in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood becomes about class and cultural conflict.
Poor, put-upon Percy Jackson. All he wants is to stay at the same school for more than a year. And have more than one friend. And not get in trouble all the time. And not have attention deficit disorder. Or such a rude, acrid stepdad. And if only that minotaur hadn’t killed his mom…
Two L-shaped, soot-blackened walls serve as the ominous backdrop of The Changeling, the first in a series of "scandalous" productions by Red Bull Theater this spring. One wall holds three glass cages, inhabited by the eerie denizens of an insane asylum, while the other is used for several lurid, thrilling acts (scenic design is by Marion Williams); cold-blooded murder and illicit sex come to mind. Director Jesse Berger's adaptation of the Jacobean tragicomedy has a great deal to work with, unsurprisingly. Aside from a few stiff moments, Berger's production steps up and delivers on the drama and suspense that is inherent in this scandalous work.
The story is a classical Spanish tragicomedy, written by 16th century playwrights Thomas Middleton and William Rowley (the former contributed to Shakespeare's Measure for Measure), and is rife with dark, morbid themes. Spanish noblewoman Beatrice-Joanna (Sara Topham) is being forced to marry Alonzo de Piracquo (John Skelley) by her deep-voiced, distinguished father Vermandero (Sam Tsoutsouvas), but she is in love with Alsemero (Christian Coulson). She is also the object of her servant, De Flores' (a fantastic Manoel Felciano) unyielding obsession. Joanna's calculative machinations to get rid of Alonzo come at the cost of her maidenhood—at the hands of De Flores himself, who yearns desperately for his mistress. Cover-ups, ploys and games of control ensue, while a subplot of similar yearnings and madness goes on in a nearby insane asylum.
The story is an admittedly noble, gory affair, characteristic of its Renaissance-Jacobean roots. The language is heightened and bombastic, as it should be. Red Bull Theater is one of the cherished few companies that has consistently produced acclaimed classical theater since its inception. In its opening scenes, The Changeling flags a little in its engagement—we briefly wonder at Alsemero's stiffness and Joanna's uncomfortable command of the stage. But such trifling missteps disappear, as the plot takes over and the actors fall into that cathartic rhythm of performance. Felciano, who plays De Flores, gives an especially intelligent performance, casting over his supposedly ugly character with a seductive poise and strange beauty. Tsoutsouvas' reverberating organ fills the stage, as does Topham's quick, shrewd movements.
Felciano and Topham, De Flores and Joanna respectively, have a terrifyingly potent chemistry. Even at the outset of their relationship, when Joanna despises De Flores for his malformed face and pathetic longing for her, each character stands on the brink of each other's sexual domains. Their interactions are fraught with an unhappy eroticism—she in the knowledge of her "taint" before marriage, and he in an impure passion of possessing his mistress, who does not requite his love. Their relationship is in quite beautiful contrast to that of Joanna and Alsemero; their love is an exercise in the age-old traditions of meeting, falling in love, and getting married. Coulson pours pure, handsome love into his character, while Felciano infects De Flores with a forbidden lust. They pivot around Topham possessively while she falls deeper and deeper into her Macbethian whirlpool of schemes.
In a somewhat unrelated caper, the inmates of an insane asylum and their captors clash over the object of their affections: Isabella (Michelle Beck). This subplot seems a comedic aside at the beginning of the play, and tries to evolve into much the same problem that the main plot is beset with—three men who love and desperately wish to possess one woman. But for all its hilarity (and occasional bursts of choreography), the plot and its accompanying characters tie in loosely with the overall story, and does little besides. Beck dignifies her character with what little respect she is given by her lovers: her husband and man-in-charge at the asylum Alibius (a hilarious Christopher McCann), an airy, clown-like madman called Antonio (Bill Army) and an equally mad, love-struck poet named Franciscus (Philippe Bowgen). Army and Bowgen flit naturally between their mad selves and their in-love selves (the latter is an extraordinary madness).
The play does not deflate after its initial catharsis; rather, actors, sound, stage and light blaze in bursts of activity. Berger casts every aspect of his production in the same explosive mold—that of creeping scandal and abrupt action. The sounds that we hear are either soft and haunting or brief and very loud (sound and music design is by Ryan Rumery). The relaxed stupor that some audience members might fall into, especially after an abstracted soliloquy or post-intermission, is kept at bay. If the ears are not engaged (perhaps during a soliloquy), then one can't help but admire the flowing dresses, leather jackets and colorful doublets that move about the stage (costume design is by Beth Goldenberg). Besides its occasional lags and head-scratching moments, The Changeling is a a rare chance to see a sumptuously produced piece of classical theater.
Produced by Red Bull Theater, The Changeling runs until Jan. 24 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St. between Hudson and Bleecker Sts.) in Manhattan. Tickets range from $60-$80. To purchase tickets, call 212-352-3101 or visit www.redbulltheater.com.
