You don't know how much you miss something, until it is taken away for far too long.
Those are the words echoing in my mind as I sat down to my first (and fully vaxxed/masked) theater performances in New York City last week. I will be the first to admit that I was so ecstatic just to be back in a live theater audience again, that it was hard to find much fault with what I saw on various stages throughout the city. To do otherwise felt ungrateful for the sacrifices made by theater artists, producers and venues to continue presenting live theater in the face of such uncertainty and potential peril. Nevertheless, most of the shows I saw would have have thrilled me in any other pre-Covid era of theater going, although the emotions elicited by a great theater experience were especially invigorating in my welcome return to live theater.
I was concerned that post-Covid theater would be overly dominated by safe, audience pleasing works to act as a balm to Covid weary audiences. To be fair, I understand that impulse especially when theater programmers are concerned about the willingness of audiences to return to live performances. Thus, I was relieved to find in several instances the return of thematically challenging and uniquely structured works to NY stages.
I found such relief in Rebecca Frecknall's breathtaking staging of Martyna Majok's excellent "Sanctuary City" presented by New York Theatre Workshop (@NYTW79) at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Set in the early years of the millennium, the play focuses on the challenging issues faced by two young undocumented immigrants in New Jersey played to perfection by Jasai Chase-Owens and Sharlene Cruz. In series of time shifting, sometimes fractured dialogue laden scenes that comprise the first half of the show, we gain insight on the lives, challenges and deep personal connections these two characters experience as they complete their high school educations. Majok's form busting structure, punctuated by Frecknall's propulsive directorial choices, kept me on the edge of my seat.
The second half of "Sanctuary City" follows a more traditional style, in direct contrast to the prior scenes. Some viewers have criticized the abrupt change, but I cannot help but feel the switch was a brilliant choice by Majok to contrast the sanctuary the two main characters find in each other in the first half, with the impact of outside forces that permeate the second half and complicate the lives and connections of the two main characters. This contrast helps illuminate and deepen the play's themes. I hope this production, which initially began previews before the shutdown in early 2020 and which NYTW took a risk in remounting, finds the audience it so well deserves.
I found further evidence that challenging work will be undertaken at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (@BAM) where the Venice Biennale Gold Lion winning Lithuanian opera "Sun & Sea" by Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite was mounted and presented to sell out audiences. BAM's Fisher black box space is transformed into a sandy and sunny beach loaded with surreptitiously placed singers amidst active supernumeraries that include casual beachgoers, noisy children, several dogs, cell phone addicted sun worshippers, badminton players and sunscreen slathering couples, many of whom interact with one another in the course of this looping hour (ish) long performance that tackles aspects of global warming, ecological displacement, urban ennui and classism. The modern minimalist style music is hauntingly beautiful and captures a mood that permeates and heightens the meticulously constructed environment. The staging may be technically observational, but by refraining form using lighting or other design cues to highlight active singers, the staging forces the viewer to do the work of framing each scene, thereby making the work feel more participatory than observational. A brilliant choice for this audacious and engaging work.
"Sun & Sea" is touring to several other US cities, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Bentonville, Arkansas (at the Crystal Bridges Museum's contemporary space). If you have the chance to see this show, don't miss it.
Kudos also go to the producers who remounted Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu's timely and exceedingly relevant play "PASS OVER." The three person cast, consisting of Steppenwolf Theater's Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood supplemented by Broadway regular Gabriel Ebert, are a joy to watch. Every movement each character makes seems to be carefully thought out and precisely choreographed, credit for which goes to Director Danya Taymor and her excellent actors. "Pass Over" is funny, moving and particularly thought provoking given the race and hate motivated attacks we have increasingly discovered over the past year and a half. I must admit that I found the newly revised ending jarringly inconsistent with the balance of the play, and I am just not sure it makes for a satisfying whole. But in context, this may just be nitpicking because overall this is a hugely rewarding work creatively speaking that deserves to be seen on Broadway. I wish this too could find the audience it deserves, but based on audience size on the evening I attended, I would guess that this is sadly not the case. But again, I applaud the producers who enabled me to experience this fine work on a Broadway stage.
I also had the privilege of experiencing a joyous return to the Public Theater's (@PublicTheaterNY) Shakespeare In The Park production of Jocelyn Bioh's "Merry Wives" a Harlem African immigrant community set adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Yes, the acting was at times unveven, and the adaptation is a somewhat unfocused (perhaps an homage to the rather unfocused Shakespeare original that proved you can have too much Falstaff). But from the moment the drums began at the outset to the glorious opening up of Beowulf Boritt's colorful set towards the end, I was enraptured to be back in Central Park under the stars enjoying a live theater performance with engaged fellow audience members who seemed to join me in celebrating the that Shakespeare's themes are not the sole province of a euro-centric white artists.
I also found much to admire, including fine acting, in Second Stage's mounting of the Rajiv Joseph's Letters of Suresh and in the culmination of Richard Nelson's Rhinebeck cycle of plays, "What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad." While neither reached the heights I experienced in the aforementioned plays discussed above, both plays still provided for satisfying evenings in the theater that no small screen viewing could ever fairly replicate.
I am happy to report that theater in New York is back and at times as fresh and exciting as ever. Fingers crossed we can keep it that way.
Finally, a word about tomorrow's Tony Awards ceremonies. I don't care who wins or loses. I do care that the theater community shows up and celebrates the return of live theater in New York. That is what this year's show is about. I would much prefer that the awards were not split between bifurcated ceremonies, one of which is on a subscription only platform (albeit one that provides a seven day free trial that is more than sufficient to allow for free viewing of the first two hours on Paramount Plus). But again, I am pleased that they are happening and will mark a guidepost to the beginning of a new era in New York theater.
