New York Critic

  Fool's Mass = From Dzieci Theatre = Directed by Matt Mitler = at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC = December 2023 = December brought one of my favorite NYC theater events — the 25th iteration of Dzieci Theatre’s production of Fool’s Mass . I saw this movable feast in a side chapel of the majestic Cathedral of St. John the Divine (that is, a side chapel itself the size of a small church). The production takes off from Marat/Sade , putting the lunatics in a sacred ambience and adding glorious irreverence. Ten or so actors play idiots — in the sense of “village idiots” — who’ve lost their priest and have to slug their way through a mass themselves. Dressed in colorless rags, almost all with caps and sporting dirty faces, they’re the picture of medieval bedlam. They give us masterful ensemble work, sometimes moving with the unity of a school of fish, sometimes freezing in lovely tableaux vivants . The iconography of religion indicates what the ersatz ceremony refers to: ther...

  Hamlet -- By William Shakespeare -- The Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park -- Directed by Kenny Leon -- Costumes by Jessica Jahn -- Set by Beowulf Boritt -- With: -- Ato Blankson-Wood   -- Nick Rehberger -- Daniel Pearce -- Solea Pfeiffer -- John Douglas Thompson -- Lorraine Toussaint -- Hamlet is The Public Theater’s major production in Central Park this summer. I saw it in preview. Director Kenny Leon has given us an interpretation with a solid foundation as a domestic tragedy. There’s some terrific acting. But Mr. Leon peppers the production with such a variety of spices that we’re sometimes bewildered. His combining of styles that we find in the show is simultaneously post-modernist and Elizabethan. To begin with, the set is inscrutable — a modern mansion that seems to have half-fallen into a fissure of the earth. To indicate that we’re in Atlanta in 2020, there’s a large Stacey Abrams 2020 sign that’s half-buried in the lawn. There’s also a Jeep that’s been driven...

  Tennessee Rising — Written and performed by Jacob Storms — Directed by Alan Cumming — June 2 to June 23   — AMT Theatre, NYC — Elaine Stritch (whose one-woman show show Elaine Stritch at Liberty was highly successful) was once asked what dramaturgical rules make a successful one-person show. She replied "Don't bother with any of that, honey. Get 'em to like you."   And this is just what Jacob Storms does in his one-man show Tennessee Rising . In this brief solo play, which he wrote and performs, he presents us with the young Tennessee Williams from the period from 1939, when he arrived in New Orleans, to 1945, when The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway. Mr. Storms enters holding a drink and impishly saying "Look what I found”. The young Williams tells us about his many experiences. Some of what we’re told is familiar, some not, and what is familiar bears repetition in Mr. Jacobs’ soft southern dialect There’s much name-dropping, some famous — Lana Turner, M...

Club DaDA/Kabaret Kaput Club DaDA/ Kabaret Kaput  is appearing for five performances at Dixon Place in NYC. It calls itself "a 'cabaret' in the Kurt Weil Weimar sense of the word". But audiences expecting the Kit Kat Club from  Cabaret  will be disappointed. The two performers haven't bothered to hire a trio or even a pianist; they sing accompanied by recorded instrumentals. When an audience buys tickets to a cabaret, they expect cabaret, not karaoke. Singing to recorded tracks is unacceptable at open mike night; in cabaret it's unknown. They've played a bait-and-switch trick on the audience.   Ellen Foley and Robert I Rubinsky are senior singers who take on the characters of bedraggled, stressed vaudevillians, "always singing — never stopping". "Nobody likes old people," they tell us, "We'll be exiled or worse." They sing a string of pop/rock songs from the 1960's onward. Not all these songs lend themselves to the cab...

  The Knight of the Burning Pestle = By Francis Beaumont   = Produced by Red Bull Theater and Fiasco Theater = Directed by Noah Brody and Emily Young = Lucille Lortel Theatre, NYC, Off-Broadway = Shakespeare eclipsed the other Elizabethan dramatists, but their plays are nonetheless very rewarding. If they're less rewarding than Shakespeare, they're also less challenging — the syntax is simpler. And being more accessible is itself a strength. Francis Beaumont was one of the best of these playwrights He wrote The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1607. It's a terrific comedy. It uses the technique of a play-within-a-play several years after Shakespeare experimented with it (and then abandoned it) in The Taming of the Shrew . Knight opens with he actors announcing the play they're about to present, The London Merchant . They're soon interrupted by The Citizen and his Wife who insist on that their son, Rafe, be included in the cast. Throughout, they interrupt the play —...

  Rockefeller and I is a solo performance presented on the sidewalk in front of the theater, La MaMa, NYC. The actor is John Maria Gutierrez and he’s directed by Uwe Mengel. Both take credit for writing the script. The script is 20 minutes long. Mr. Gutierrez repeats it twice — verbatim — to create an hour-long performance. Mr. Gutierrez has a relaxed presence. It’s not commanding; it invites us to examine what this strange man is doing, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk along a 12-foot white line. He makes eye contact with us only occasionally, but he never leaves us by retreating into his own reverie.   “Two billion plus two billion is four billion,” he begins, and chalks “Rockefeller and I” on the wall. He continues: “I have no problem with white people. Some of my best friends are white people.” His mother says that Jesus had blue eyes and blond hair. He tells us that he’s lucky because he has light skin. These comments are ruminations, not expressions of resentment. ...