There are few venues for live immersive entertainment as interestingly moody and fun as the McKittrick Hotel.  My first experience, over a decade ago, was Sleep No More which is still running.  The audience literally runs around a hotel.  Other shows happen on different floors.  Woman in Black is in the Club Car space.  It is subtitled “a ghost story in a pub.”  The English pub setting is ideal.

Apparently this show has been running in London for thirty years and was made into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe.  A fairly large sized audience grabs drinks and takes a seat facing the stage.  An older man named Arthur Kipps (David Acton) comes out and begins reading his manuscript.  He informs us that the story must be told as “I cannot carry the burden.”

A younger man, The Actor (Ben Porter), comes on stage to provide guidance  to the purposefully boring resuscitation of this nightmarish tale.  It is meta theater.  It is fun for a moment or two.  However, it goes on far too long before they jump into the story.  We came for the “howlings and shrieking and groanings and scuttlings.”  They do arrive in the form of an old fashioned creepy country house ghost story.

The Actor becomes the Solicitor who travels to the house via horse and carriage.  The older man takes on the new character of the driver.  They bounce along the unpaved roads in a spirited bit of whimsy.  Both performers play multiple parts, changing jackets and hats along the way.  Unfortunately the first act goes on far too long.  All five of us were dying (pun intended) to get out of very uncomfortable chairs.

The solicitor arrives at the scary mansion and discovers there is much paperwork to go through.  He tells us that his “main sensation is one of tedium.”  We agree but for the wrong reasons.  This play takes a very long time to get where it is going.  Is the payoff worth the wait?  No but the packed audience might disagree with my assessment.

There is nothing remarkable about the old school ghost story plot and the mysteries which are revealed.  There are some effective scares allowing the audience jump and scream.  That they do so vigorously means they really, really want to scream.  I did not scream.

Both actors are reprising their roles from London.  They are both intense and enjoyable to watch.  The lighting (Anshuman Bhatia) and, especially, the sound effects (Sebastian Frost) are top notch.  All of the ingredients are present for a delicious fall fright fest.  The story length, however, sinks this one.  Towards the end, revelations are thrust out in a mad dash to the finale.  I was happy when it ended, sorry to say.

I did have one unexpected chuckle.  When Mr. Porter was traversing the audience in fear, his face seemed an exact replica of Hugh Skinner who plays Prince William in the outrageous sitcom, The Windsors.  Wishing you were watching something else is not a nice thing to say no matter how true.

Woman in Black is running at the Mc Kittrick Hotel until January 30, 2022.

www.mckittrickhotel.com

A good creepy play can get under the viewer’s skin.  Caryl Churchill’s Far Away is one such piece.  The setting is a “familiar country, over the period of several decades.”  While the country may be familiar, the goings on are most certainly not.  A sense of dread, foreboding and discomfort hook you in quickly until it is impossible to put your feet on solid ground.

Premiering in 2000, this play is considered one of Ms. Churchill’s finest works.  It is easy to see why PTP/NYC chose this as one of their four streamed shows this fall.  The people who inhabit this world don’t trust other people, are lied to and suspect widespread corruption in companies and government.  Furthermore, alliances are breaking down and reforming in an increasingly dangerous and hostile world.

The first part is a conversation between young Joan (Lilah May Pfeiffer) and her Aunt Harper (Nesba Crenshaw).  Joan is having trouble going to bed.  Her Aunt advises that it’s often difficult when in a new place.  Joan disagrees.  She’s been many places.  Why is she here?  That is not explained.  The beauty of the writing in Far Away lies in its murkiness.

Joan slipped out of her bedroom window earlier that evening and climbed onto a tree.  She caught a glimpse of her Uncle outside in the darkness.  What was he doing?  Her Aunt tells her that he likes to get fresh air.  Joan claimed she heard a noise?  What kind of noise?  The answers are vague.  Through a series of half-truths and outright lies from her Aunt, Joan continues to pry.  What is the world she inhabits that makes her so penetratingly perceptive?

In the middle section of this play, Joan is older (Caitlin Duffy) and has just begun a job in a hatmaking company.  She is conversing with Todd (Ro Boddie), a more experienced hatmaker.  There seems to be a never ending need for hats.  They are used in the parades.  Todd remarks one day that he is tired since he stayed up late watching the trials.  As time passes their relationship grows.  Is there something untrustworthy about this company and the government which needs to be disclosed?

The final section broadens the scope of this play to consider a world in conflict.  Living beings are destroying alliances and forging new ones.  The mysteries deepen the intrigue.  What exactly happened “when the elephants went to the Dutch”?  When this play ends after forty minutes, everything and nothing is illuminated.  This is a foggy, eerily conceived dystopia and an immensely satisfying glimpse of an uncertain future.

Cheryl Faraone directed this production which works nicely in a streamed format.  The performances are all quite good and I was hooked from start to finish.  This play is especially recommended for those want to be on the right side of history.  In Far Away, it is not easy to discern good vs. evil.  That’s not unlike our world in 2020.  In America today, so many people define those two seemingly simple terms differently.

Far Away is streaming until midnight on Sunday, October 18, 2020 and can be accessed via the PTP/NYC website.

www.ptpnyc.org

American Dreams, in particular American Dreamers, are the subjects of this live streamed interactive entertainment.  A reservation is required to gain access.  A voiceover announces “we’ve entered a temporary government facility and security zone.”  Happy whistling plays until the show commences.

A game show ensues which has a clever conceit.  Three people compete for the one available United States citizenship opening.  The Deputy Director of Otter (India Nicole Burton) warms up the audience and gleefully promises different group of citizens for every show!  The three men on this night were from Israel, Mexico and Pakistan.

Before the game show actually starts, there is some banter with the delegates assembled.  A rather sickly group sing-a-long of the National Anthem occurs which seems intentional.  Our amusingly flippant hosts for the competition arrive via stream (Jens Rasmussen and playwright Leila Buck).  This is the third season of the show.  The “three contestants compete for Columbus’ gold.”  The winner is granted “immediate citizenship into the greatest nation on Earth.”  The sarcasm and irony is most welcome.

Round one starts with a section called How America Works.  Points are awarded and subtracted throughout the game.  Previously chosen volunteers join in for America’s Favorites and try to help the hopeful immigrants get more points.  The evening I saw, all three helpers guessed wrong.  I got all three correct perhaps because I am a better citizen than they.

The interactivity with the audience is amongst the stronger aspects of this entertainment.  Polling was fun and worked smoothly.  The downfall is that it was not used enough.  Other forced participatory moments, such as the many requests for a show of hands, happened far too much.  When half of the audience on screen does not use their camera, the execution suffered and it showed.

Part of the game show enables the contestants to try for an O-1 Visa by demonstrating a particular talent.  One audience member described a dream she had.  Usman (Imran Sheikh), the Pakestani, had to create a drawing of that dream.  Adil (Ali Andre Ali), the Israeli, shared a recipe with the hosts, all of whom were socially distant.  The Mexican contestant, Alejandro (Andrew Aaron Valdez), said his special skill was fixing people up when they get hurt.  He was deported even though he arrived in the country at the age of five and his mother paid taxes.  He also served in the National Guard.  The storylines do get serious occasionally and the moments are nicely performed by all three men.

The game show feels elongated as there are sections in which momentum slows considerably.  More interactivity – polling, trivia – could really spice up the fun quotient.  I would tamper down the voice and thumbs up requests since they don’t seem to work as well as designed.  We are all getting used to streaming dysfunction in 2020.

A sharp-edged satire about what it means to become an American citizen is surely a ripe target.  A game show format that plays with the silliness of the form is a good choice to have a little laugh yet make a few key points.  Overall, American Dreams falls short of its ambitions by not being darkly ironic enough.

The ending does offer surprise, however.  Do you get to find out who won?  Or if all or none of them won?  That, my fellow citizens, is for you to find out for yourselves.

American Dreams is scheduled to run for seven weeks through nine different theaters around the country.  The Working Theater’s live production is October 20 – 25, 2020.  Links for other theaters can be found here.

www.americandreamsplay.com

www.theworkingtheater.org

PTP/NYC is known for producing politically aware plays.  They present theatrically complex and thought-provoking works of contemporary social and cultural relevance.  For their abbreviated season this year, they are streaming four productions over four weeks.  The second one, Don’t Exaggerate (desire and abuse), certainly fits the bill.  Howard Barker’s work is subtitled, “a political statement in the form of hysteria.”

This forty minute stream of consciousness is delivered by Robert Emmet Lunney.  He portrays a Hungarian soldier who was killed in World War I.  His spirit, however, is back to make commentary about the world since then.  This monologue was first performed in 1984 and is not dated one bit.  So many off-hand remarks land darkly and humorously but also feel current.

Right from the start, you understand why this piece is on this theater company’s schedule this year.  “The truth is dying / It is praised so much / Don’t keep on about the truth.”  Death is a major theme which perhaps seems obvious from a dead war soldier.  The tone is serious and blunt with comments like “suicide is the highest moment of consciousness.”  He views Europe as “death’s estate.”  Later in the show, truth and death combine and we are made to realize “the dead have all the facts.”

All is not gloom and doom in this wildly non-linear wordplay.  The world is an “avalanche of falling periodicals” and “everyone is in print.”  Written over three decades ago, that observation is even more true today.  Social media and non-stop news cycles make for a never ending avalanche.

There are many societal zingers scattered throughout which entertain.  One particular favorite was “never underestimate the reproductive powers of the decadent.”  Mr. Barker has a disgusting opinion of mankind in general.  That viewpoint pops up in serious commentary and also in hilarious one liners including a throwaway line about hearing “choruses of violated sheep.”

Climate change hits hard here as well.  Rising temperatures of the planet are contributing to cancers in the population.  A little later on, he comes back to this notion and links back to his running commentary about truths.  An “increase in cancers” is equivalent to an “increase in lies.”  There are so many fascinating parallels to our 21st century cavalcade of large scale dramas happening worldwide.

Here’s a tip:  “you can always take an intellectual for a ride if you stare into his eyes.”  I love Mr. Barker’s writing and the rambling style which managed to loop around in a whirlpool of sarcasm and despair.

The central performance by Mr. Lunney could have dripped with even more sarcasm.  I wonder if the monologue might come across differently spoken by a young man rather than one wiser with age.  A fresh faced soldier who has an axe to grind.  The acerbic tone might be even more disconcerting.  The live streaming, however, was a great medium to appreciate this work.  Director Richard Romagnoli’s in-your-face close ups kept the focus intense.

Don’t Exaggerate (desire and abuse) is available on PTP/NYC’s You Tube channel through Sunday, October 4, 2020.  The next production is Dan O’Briens The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage beginning October 8th.

youtube/ptpnyc

“Get out of the car.”  “Shut the fuck up before we beat your ass.”  So begins the searing storytelling in 12 Angry Men… and Women:  The Weight of the Wait.  Based on a book which explored the black male experience in dealing with police brutality, The Billie Holiday Theatre updated a previously performed play to also includes female voices.  Obviously the material is timely.  Predictably it is upsetting.  The production is gripping and relentless, like the racism on display.

A preview of the creation and celebration of the first Black Lives Matter Plaza in New York City begins this streamed theatrical event.  The play was performed live last Saturday night on the mural in the middle of the street. The theater and this show are located in the middle of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.  A fitting locale as this area has been a center of African-American culture for the last century.

In this new century, more stories need to be told.  Director Dr. Indira Etwaroo makes the mission clear in her letter to the audience.  “We must pass a better world on to the next generation. The time has come to stand together. The time for justice is now.”

Musicians from the New York Philharmonic begin the show with a musical overture.  The sirens begin and lights are flashing.  A view into the terrors and humiliations which follow are clear-eyed, angry and emotional.

Five actors perform their monologues (with some intersecting dialogue) in separate acting modules.  The production design and especially the lighting effects ratchet up feelings of claustrophobia and intentional targeting.  Staged in the middle of the street at night lends an additional air of tension, especially in concert with the stories’ settings.  The visible yellow Black Lives Matter painted on the road firmly grounds the work in the now.  The urgency demanded by a serious docudrama is on full display.

The first vignette told is one of a criminal justice reporter for the New York Times.  He traveled to Salisbury, Maryland for a story.  His head was shoved down on a police vehicle.  Of course this was a case of mistaken accusation but no apology was offered.  “Sir, this is the south.  We have different laws down here.”  The unspoken word that entered my mind was “still.”

These stories are by no means focused geographically.  An English woman and her brother were driving near Los Angeles when they were pulled over.  She had not lived in America long enough to understand how the police functioned here.  Her experience put her “squarely in a sub-region of the borders of American blackness.”

A Harvard lawyer is harassed while making a phone call in Boston’s airport.  A teen describes everyday with the DT’s, or local detectives, in her neighborhood.  More car pullovers.  Scenes of abject terror and fear.  Tough choices between one’s rights and dignity, or death.  The material is as hard as is the subject matter.  It is supposed to be.  And it succeeds.

A story of a black man going to a bar during a return home to Asheville, North Carolina overwhelmed me with its cruelty.  Another horrifying tale when an illegal left turn resulted in 45 stitches in the head.  How about a Professor of Criminal Procedures walking home at night in his neighborhood?  Don’t think you can face this material?  You must, especially if this is not the America you see each and every day.  Let artists help us all understand and reflect and share.

How else are we going to heal from the all-too recent scars of the Breonna Taylor tragedy?  12 Angry Men… and Women ends with Ms. Taylor’s mother’s words.  You will hear how she learned what happened to her daughter.  It is sickening and heartbreaking.  This is vital theater and needs to be experienced for both its power and its purpose.  And, most importantly, to help us push forward to a more just society tomorrow.

“We must pass a better world on to the next generation. The time has come to stand together. The time for justice is now.”

12 Angry Men… and Women:  The Wait of the Weight is streaming on You Tube on the page of The Billie Holiday Theatre.

youtube/12angrymenandwomen

The phrase “Two Can Play at that game” implies retaliation against an act of deception, deceit or harm.  In Trevor Rhone’s enormously satisfying comedy, two characters engage in a game of wits.  Survival is one theme.  Surviving a twenty year marriage.  Managing to live in a world which has become a gun battleground.  Poverty and joblessness are suffocating.  Dreaming for a better life in America.  Aspiring to being a woman who is more than a domesticated slave.  The flavor is Jamaican but the targets are universal.

Jim and Gloria are attempting to sleep in their Kingston home.  Gunfire is ablaze outside which is nothing new.  Elderly “Pops” is in the back room coughing.  Jim is completely paranoid.  He is nervous and on edge.  Gloria suggests he take more valium.  This play takes place in the 1970’s.  Despite the tensions and horrors of life in this lower middle income neighborhood, the tone is one hundred percent situation comedy.  The foibles and tribulations of a couple after their children have fled the coop for better pastures in America.

All three kids are now illegal immigrants there.  Son Andrew sends a letter home.  Jim is fearful about his children being caught.  “Uncle Sam is a bitch.  Him have satellite up in the sky can read number on dis house.”  Imagine how Jim’s worries would escalate with thirty years of additional and more invasive technologies.  His other son Paul has three jobs.  Dad’s reaction is “God bless America.”

Pops dies in the first scene.  Jim and Gloria hatch a plan to emigrate to the United States.  “We have to go to Uncle Sam.”  In classic comedy fashion they will bicker over money which is very tight.  Jim notes that Gloria is spending too much on “war paint” which could buy extra food.  She retorts, “Yuh still have money for yuh cigarette though.”  Gloria appears smarter and more resourceful than her domineering husband and is learning to gain power in the relationship.

Today she witnessed a man selling a puff for ten cents.  Gloria invests in a carton and negotiates with her husband.  Jim reluctantly pays $1.50 for a cigarette.  He then asks for a match.  That’ll be another ten cents.  The scene is a small one but nicely demonstrates the state of their relationship.  Through all the dangers and disappointments in their lives, they have managed to survive to this point with their classically humorous and recognizable identities.  While this Jamaican couple is drawn as a stereotype, that is clearly playwright Trevor Rhone’s intention.  These two are prototypes of similar dreamers everywhere.

There are tons of laughs written into this comedy which is being revived after its 1985 New York premiere.  Gloria’s frustrations are a common one even today.  She knows her husband is seeing someone else on Tuesday nights.  “You can’t manage your homework properly yet yuh taking on extracurricular activity.”  They are aligned, however, in escaping their increasingly embattled homeland for the promise of America.  We laugh with them due to their personalities but the urgency registers regardless of the humor.

Another satisfying layer of Two Can Play is the emergence of Gloria as a woman.  She’s discovering that her servitude needs to change.  She is no longer property to lend, lease or rent.  Her adventures in this play are thoroughly enjoyable.  When she realizes the only thing holding her marriage together is crisis, her transformation blossoms.  The play nicely builds a believable story arc despite the wildly entertaining comedic escapades.

Joyce Sylvester and Michael Rogers are terrific as Gloria and Jim.  Their chemistry has the appropriately lived-in feel.  They both know how to expertly land a joke and they each have an abundance of them.  Their oversized facial expressions are truly hilarious.  Director Clinton Turner Davis wisely turns up all the dials to showcase this play as a big and very broad comedy.  These two characters could easily carry a television series.  You love their imperfections.  You want to hear about their desires.  And, finally, you root for their ultimate success, whatever that will mean.

The New Federal Theatre production of Two Can Play is running at the Castillo Theatre through April 5, 2020.

www.allstars.org/castillo

Those theatergoers who dare to venture into the ominous sounding Suicide Forest will encounter an experience both surreal and deeply grounded.  The title refers to Aokigahara, or Sea of Trees, located at the base of Mount Fuji.  In Japanese mythology this forest has a reputation as a home to ghosts of the dead.  Playwright Haruna Lee paints an unflattering picture of society through a completely unpredictable story arc.

A painting of Mount Fuji in all of its majestic beauty hangs on the wall of Jian Jung’s astonishing cartoon-like set.  Before the play gets underway, a ghost named Mad Mad (Aoi Lee) is walking around.  Searching?  Collecting?  In Lee’s play, vignettes are far from literal.  The two main characters of this play are Asuza, portrayed by the playwright, and Salaryman (an excellent Eddy Toru Ohno).  Asuza is a sixteen year old schoolgirl.  Salaryman is a much older white collar working man in his sixties.

Salaryman discusses a myriad of topics with a unnamed “Friend” (Keizo Kaji).  Men are carnivores and meat lovers.  Suicide is a coward’s way.  These men are victims of changing cultural mores particularly as they concern females.  Friend asks, “What’s up with women these days?”  Salaryman notes that you cannot even ask that question anymore without being fired.  These guys don’t want to become part of the new generation of herbivore men.

An Office Lady (Yuki Kawahisa) lets Salaryman know there are very young girls here to see him.  They have come for an interview.  Reality turns to fantasy and perhaps to dreams and nightmares.  Office Lady flirts aggressively with the older man.  Is she young enough for him?  This bizarre encounter winds up with her blunt question, “What are you thinking of in that disgusting, perverted little brain of yours?”

Sexual development and the objectification of women is front and center in Suicide Forest.  This topic does not travel down a safe road here.  The disturbing view into men and their thoughts add an uneasy but effective revulsion to these disjointed scenes.  Are women simply wired to exchange sex for material things?  Where is this play going?

In a humorous nod to Japanese game shows you may have seen on television, Salaryman will be the unwitting participant in a very public humiliation.  That section seems to flesh out the man’s unhappiness as a life long submissive member of the corporate emasculating machine.  Japanese belief systems are definitely on shaky ground.

Haruna Lee’s play takes many turns (some of them hairpin) and I will not spoil the intensely personal and vividly realized moments.  As an artist, Lee is trying to comprehend what it means to be 50% Japanese.  Sometimes 33% seems right.  Other times as high as 70%.  “I am also, usually, a high percentage of American too.”

There is one scene in this unique play in which goats are climbing a mountain.  That part felt overly long to sit through.  Most of the staging by Director Aya Ogawa cleverly embraces the fantastical sweep of the storytelling while allowing the societal observations and personal growth elements to shine.

Suicide Forest is not a play for those who have to traverse a linear path.  If you are willing to be led into a dark, unknowable sea of trees, surprises – both welcome and unwelcome – will expose themselves.  The effect is like emigrating to a foreign country.  Reconciling drastically different cultures while uncomfortably finding your own place within them.  This is meaty, risky and altogether idiosyncratic theater worth exploring and contemplating afterward.

Ma-Yi Theater Company’s encore presentation of Suicide Forest at the A.R.T./New York Theatre is running through March 15, 2020.  This play was originally performed at the Bushwick Starr in 2019.

www.ma-yitheatre.org

www.art-newyork.org