THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Friday, March 4, 2016

FROM: Michelle Farabaugh Danielle Gruskiewicz, Claire Manning, Amanda Price

PAGES: 18, including this page

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March 4, 2016

Review: ‘Rimbaud in New York’ Splices the Genes of the Original Outlaw Artist

By Ben Brantley

It is the consensus of the seriously cool that nobody was ever cooler than Arthur Rimbaud. More than a century after his death, this French poet still blazes as the unwashed apotheosis of the outlaw artist, a beautiful, sexually fluid renegade genius who, as one of his early biographers put it, “lived in three years the literary evolution of modern times.”

At the end of those three years, he was only 20. But by then he had conducted and ended a fabled love affair with the older Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine and written the entire body of visionary verse that would anticipate future iconoclasts in art movements from Surrealism to punk rock.

No, he didn’t die young (he lived on to a disease-riddled 37), as is traditionally expected of this particular breed of cult idol. Instead, he one-upped the usual gorgeous corpses by walking out on his glory with a sneer and refusing to look back.

In other words, Rimbaud was the opposite of nostalgic, which means he probably wouldn’t care much for “Rimbaud in New York,” which runs through Sunday at BAM Fisher. This earnest collage tribute piece from the Civilians, written and directed by Steve Cosson, celebrates Rimbaud as the man who invented downtown as a state of mind.

That’s the sphere where flaming creative creatures from the margins dreamed into being their own colony of otherness, of a rough and ravishing world on the fringes. Legend has it that the overcrowded, overpriced island called Manhattan once harbored such a world. And it is to that remote civilization that “Rimbaud in New York” looks with a wonder that is only occasionally tempered by skepticism.

As is the wont of the Civilians, who practice “investigative theater,” this production channels the voices of assorted experts, artists and academics on the subject under consideration. They include writers and musicians who knew (or know of) downtown New York from the 1950s through the ’70s, when it was inhabited by the likes of Frank O’Hara, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine and the artist David Wojnarowicz. The speakers themselves are incarnated by an eight-member ensemble, who used various wigs and props to become the show’s assorted pundits and witnesses.

Just who the performers are impersonating is revealed, in haste, only at the show’s end. And you can be forgiven for feeling like an unexpected and uninitiated guest at a gathering of a Rimbaud fan club, whose members self-consciously put on different funny costumes and voices while discussing the object of their fascination.

Sometimes they debate the meaning and legacy of Rimbaud; at other times — and these are, relatively speaking, the best of times — they recite from “Illuminations,” as translated by the eminent American poet John Ashbery(who is also a character here), or perform musical numbers in homage to that work, written by seven composers.

The prose poems of “Illuminations” defy literal interpretation, and it’s best to sit back and let the hallucinogenic images swirl over and around you. Rimbaud, as is often noted here, created his own sui generis landscape, and you can enter it only if you accept it on his terms. Whether incanting or singing, most of the cast members here only rarely suggest that they have fully stepped into that world.

As a teenager, I saw Ms. Smith, an avowed Rimbaud acolyte, reciting poetry in a claustrophobic New York club and had a visceral impression that she was inhabiting a wild and distant planet. I couldn’t see what she saw, but through seeing how she saw — with that alarmed, glazed, jubilant gaze — I felt I could sense the exotic wonder of wherever her mind had gone roaming. Such moments seldom arrive in “Rimbaud in New York,” which has been developed with support from the Poetry Foundation, though there are flickers of Smithian rapture in the poems performed by Jo Lampert and Rebecca Hart.

The show is most engaging in musical numbers that summon the impact of Rimbaud on others, which often feature lively, stylized choreography by Sam Pinkleton that suggests how the Ramones might have danced if Bob Fosse had choreographed them. Among these are the rowdy opener, “Hot Mess Disaster Boy” (with music by Adam Cochran); “The Future of Poetry Is Female” (based on an interview with the poet Ariana Reines), written and performed by Ms. Hart; and Joseph Keckler’s “City,” inspired by Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud-mask photographs, sung in a larynx-defying range of octaves by Mr. Keckler.

The show stumbles badly when the performers and the design team — which includes Andromache Chalfant (set), Paloma Young (costumes) and Eric Southern (lighting) — seek to recreate the sensory orgy of reading “Illuminations.” Pretzel-twisted balloons and cascading yellow balls, after all, don’t quite match a poète maudit’s “dreamed-of release, the shattering of grace crossed with new violence.”

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March 4, 2016 Review: In ‘Red Speedo,’ a Swimmer Faces a Moral Quandary

By Charles Isherwood

A bright slip of a swimsuit seems a small garment on which to hang a knotty morality play, but the ingenious Lucas Hnath engineers this remarkable feat with “Red Speedo,” a taut, incisive drama at New York Theater Workshop about a swimmer with high Olympic hopes and a waterlogged ethical compass.

Ray, played by the terrific Alex Breaux, has spent his life in the water, essentially, and is preparing for the upcoming Olympic trials as the play begins. (The sleek set, by Riccardo Hernandez, is a gym with an actual pool, a slice of which fronts the stage.) But a scandal at the swim club where he trains has the potential to derail his dream. A cooler stocked with performance-enhancing drugs was found in the club refrigerator.

Ray has told his coach (Peter Jay Fernandez) that he heard the drugs belonged to a fellow swimmer, but in the tense opening scene, Ray’s brother Peter (Lucas Caleb Rooney), a lawyer who is also his de facto manager, vociferously argues that even a whiff of controversy about doping could damage his brother’s reputation — and potentially ruin the coach’s future, too. He makes the case that the coach serves everyone’s best interests by tossing the drugs in the toilet and hushing the whole episode up.

When the coach, whose honorable nature Mr. Fernandez makes nicely transparent, insists that it’s his moral obligation to report the incident to the sport’s authorities, Peter only doubles down on his suasion, implying he will move Ray to another club if the coach doesn’t fall in line. There’s more than a potential Olympic medal at stake, of course; with fame comes a financial windfall, and Peter has already been in talks with the Speedo people about endorsement money.

Mr. Hnath, whose previous plays include “The Christians” and “A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney,” has a wonderfully inventive theatrical mind. He rewrites the rules of dramaturgy with each play, usually tossing out the naturalistic playbook — and for that matter the playbook he created the last time around.

With fragmented dialogue that often comes at you like artillery fire, “Red Speedo” recalls the (good) work of David Mamet, distilled and compressed. (A little more looseness in the direction, by Lileana Blain-Cruz, might make the play’s first scene feel less like fake-Mamet.) In its depiction of ruthless men who will stop at nothing to serve their own ends, one might also discern a nod to Mr. Mamet.

But Mr. Hnath’s voice and style are fundamentally his own. There’s an elemental, stylized simplicity to his work that focuses attention on the meanings behind the matters at hand. The characters in “Red Speedo” are

palpably, at times movingly, human in their complexity and weakness (“We all do things that are sorta good and sorta not so good,” as Ray puts it), but as the play gathers steam it broadens out to become a subtle indictment of the ethos that insists that winning is everything.

As Peter says, “When you go for what you want, when you think about yourself, when you do what’s best for you, everyone benefits.” Could Ayn Rand have put it any better? (Or, say, a current presidential candidate?)

Certainly Peter, portrayed with forceful intensity by Mr. Rooney, is not merely looking out for his younger brother from filial affection. He’s disenchanted with his legal firm, and hopes that with Ray’s success he can smoothly move into the lucrative business of “athlete management.”

But Ray, who tends to speak in a dopey-sounding monotone — Peter readily admits, in Ray’s presence, that he’s “no scholar” — soon makes a startling revelation that threatens all his brother’s assumptions about the bright future: The drugs in that cooler were actually his, and he doesn’t think that he can perform as well without them.

“I definitely need the stuff,” he says when Peter tries to suggest that it’s really his natural talent that has gotten him this far. “I mean, this is like whatdoyoucallit — science.”

Ray was on the verge of being dropped by his coach when a sports therapist, Lydia (a sharp Zoë Winters), who was also his girlfriend, suggested that the problem was just a matter of testosterone levels, and that only by artificially boosting those levels would he be able to improve his times. Sure enough, when Ray started doping, he gradually rose to the top of the field. (The probability that a swimmer would be able to enter the Olympic trials without a history of drug testing seems remote, but I’ll grant Mr. Hnath his right to some poetic license.)

As Ray, Mr. Breaux gives a performance of remarkable dexterity. It takes a very smart actor to play dumb as well as he does, mining Ray’s inarticulateness for humor that is never cruel. Chomping away at carrots almost throughout the play, seated at the edge of the pool, Ray often stares into the middle distance, his face an inscrutable mask, as his brother and coach wrestle over his fate — and theirs.

Once Ray is backed into a corner, however, he reveals a streak of deceptiveness that Mr. Breaux makes equally believable — while still maintaining a sense of forlorn desperation that keeps his character sympathetic. Ray and Peter grew up poor, and Ray, who still depends on his brother for handouts, knows that swimming is his only chance at making a success of himself.

“Don’t I deserve a chance?” he pleads. “Isn’t that the American thing?”

“Red Speedo” only grows in intensity as the clock winds down on its brief, 80-minute running time. I won’t reveal any of the reversals, compromises, betrayals and threats that ratchet up the tension, but by the play’s ambiguous conclusion it’s become clear that the color of the swimsuit Mr. Breaux wears throughout its duration — a red the color of fresh blood — was not chosen at random.

Red SpeedoBy Lucas Hnath; directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz; sets by Riccardo Hernandez; costumes by Montana Blanco; lighting by Yi Zhao; sound by Matt Tierney; stage manager, Terri K. Kohler. Presented by New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director; Jeremy Blocker, managing director. Through March 27 at New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, 212-460-5475, nytw-.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.WITH: Alex Breaux (Ray), Peter Jay Fernandez (Coach), Lucas Caleb Rooney (Peter) and Zoë Winters (Lydia). C1

March 4, 2016 Review: ‘Familiar,’ a Comic Clash of Assimilation on the Path to a Wedding

By Charles Isherwood

A wedding almost always involves some kind of culture clash. Church ceremony or civil? To bridesmaid or not to bridesmaid? But the impending nuptials in Danai Gurira’s fiercely funny new play, “Familiar,” about a Zimbabwean-American family in Minnesota, make even the most fraught weddings seem comparatively placid affairs. By the end of this engrossing comedy-drama, which opened on Thursday at Playwrights Horizons, deep fissures within the family have been exposed, fresh wounds are rubbed raw and long-buried secrets are unearthed.

Ms. Gurira, an excellent actor as well as a playwright, is having a remarkable season on New York stages. Her terrific “Eclipsed,” about the brutal cost borne by women during the Liberian civil war in Africa, starring Lupita Nyong’o, opens on Broadway on Sunday after an acclaimed run at the Public Theater last fall, making history as the first Broadway production to be written by, directed by and entirely cast with black women. (A dollar for anyone who can name the first such production staffed exclusively by white men.)

Although it is just as accomplished, “Familiar” is a play written in a significantly lighter key, even as it probes with subtlety and smarts the subject of immigration and assimilation — a topic of major currency these days.

Donald and Marvelous Chinyaramwira (Harold Surratt and Tamara Tunie) are the kind of people even the most rabid foes of immigration might point to with satisfaction as living proof that achieving the American dream is not the exclusive privilege of those born here.

They fled Zimbabwe more than three decades ago, during the country’s civil war, and have settled thoroughly into the American way of life. Marvelous is a biochemist; Donald a partner in a law firm. The measure of their success can be easily gleaned from the traditional furnishings displayed on the handsome set by Clint Ramos. Their comfort with our native customs is indicated by the comfy armchair squarely facing the flat-screen television in the living room, into which Donald settles to watch a college football game.

Marvelous, played with regal elegance by Ms. Tunie, has taken charge of the coming celebration, piling up platters of rich canapés to treat family and friends before the rehearsal dinner. Donald and Marvelous’s eldest daughter, also a lawyer, Tendi (a sterling Roslyn Ruff), will be marrying her boyfriend Chris (Joby Earle, endearingly goofy) on the morrow, and Marvelous is the kind of woman who wants to make sure no detail has been overlooked.

Of course, a wedding without drama would hardly qualify as a wedding at all, and Ms. Gurira proves a plentiful caterer in this regard. Up first is the mild tension between Marvelous and her younger daughter, Nyasha (Ito Aghayere), who has just returned from a trip to her ancestral home, full of renewed pride in her heritage and questions about her parents’ apparent lack of interest in maintaining ties to the culture they were born into.

Nyasha, whom Ms. Aghayere portrays with appealing vibrancy, bubbles with enthusiasm over her trip, but she must also defend herself from her mother’s cutting remarks about her somewhat formless career as an aspiring singer-songwriter who makes a modest living as a feng shui consultant.

Also on the receiving end of Marvelous’s imperious asides is her sister Margaret (a warm, slightly melancholy Melanie Nicholls-King), who has also become firmly assimilated into a new culture — Nyasha and her mother share a joke about her frequent “weaves” — albeit with less financial success. (To anesthetize herself against her sister’s subtle broadsides in this regard, she continually nurses a glass of red wine.)

But the bombshell comes with the arrival from Zimbabwe of Marvelous’s older sister, Anne, played with a commanding air of dignity by the superb Myra Lucretia Taylor. This surprise, arranged by Tendi, does not sit well with Marvelous when she learns that Anne will perform a traditional Zimbabwean “bride price” ceremony.

“That is a nonstarter!” Marvelous announces upon learning the news.

“You think you are white now?” Anne counters. “Now you want to judge me? I am here to bless our daughter,” she adds, putting the emphasis on “our,” indicating the cultural tradition by which a young woman’s aunts are also considered her “mother.”

Just as the conflict between Marvelous and Anne is reaching fever pitch — “You want this little white boy from Minnetonka to bring us some cows?” Marvelous asks mockingly — the little white boy, Chris, quietly sidles into the room, silencing dissent, at least for the moment.

Ms. Gurira weaves issues of cultural identity and displacement, generational frictions and other meaty matters into dialogue that flows utterly naturally. Her engaging characters are drawn with sympathy and, under the crisp direction of Rebecca Taichman, “Familiar” stays firmly on course even as the complications pile up.

New revelations continue to emerge well into the second act, inching Ms. Gurira close to melodrama. But “Familiar” certainly doesn’t contain more chewy family-angst fodder than, say, “August: Osage County,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award, even if some critics felt it was a boxing match with a few too many rounds.

And all the confrontations are considerably leavened by humor, particularly when Chris must rope in his brother, the laid-back Brad (a hilarious Joe Tippett) into representing him during the bride price ceremony, because it’s improper for the groom himself to partake directly in negotiations.

Since Donald and Marvelous’s decision never to return to Zimbabwe becomes a topic of fiery debate, it struck me as odd that Ms. Gurira never brings in the name of Robert Mugabe, the leader of Zimbabwe since 1980,

whose policies have virtually destroyed the country’s economy. Then again, as entertaining as their squabbling is, the last thing this family needs is another bone of contention to gnaw on before finally sitting down to that rehearsal dinner.

FamiliarBy Danai Gurira; directed by Rebecca Taichman; sets by Clint Ramos; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Tyler Micoleau; sound by Darron L West; hair and wig design by Cookie Jordan; production stage manager, Cole P. Bonenberger; associate artistic director, Adam Greenfield. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; Carol Fishman, general manager. Through March 27 at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, 212-279-4200, playwrightshorizons-.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.-WITH: Ito Aghayere (Nyasha), Joby Earle (Chris), Melanie Nicholls-King (Margaret), Roslyn Ruff (Tendi), Harold Surratt (Donald), Myra Lucretia Taylor (Anne), Joe Tippett (Brad) and Tamara Tunie (Marvelous).

March 3, 2016 Barbara Cook to Return to a New York Stage This Spring

By Mark Kennedy

Barbara Cook, whose buttery soprano helped define show after show on Broadway, is coming back to a New York stage to share stories and songs.

The Grammy- and Tony Award-winner who starred in "Candide," ''The Music Man" and "Carousel," will star in "Barbara Cook: Then and Now," conceived by James Lapine and directed by Tommy Tune, who have 13 Tonys between them.

Previews begin April 13 at the New World Stages complex on 50th Street. The one-woman show is billed as a "vibrant and candid journey through her remarkable life."

Cook was one of Broadway's leading ingenues of the 1950s and later a major cabaret and concert interpreter of popular American song. Stephen Sondheim became one of her biggest champions and she starred in a legendary 1985 concert version of his "Follies" at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall and led a critically acclaimed revue of his songs in "Mostly Sondheim."

She battled alcoholism and weight gain to reinvent herself as an in-demand solo artist. Cook's autobiography will be released by HarperCollins Publishers in June.

"As I began to write my upcoming memoir, I was surprised by how moved I was in revisiting my early years and later my alcoholic years," Cook said in a statement.

"I've always felt that the narrative of my life came through many of the songs I sing, both tunes I've introduced and favorites that have spoken to me through different chapters of my life. I'm hoping this evening will be a live companion piece to the book that taught me more about my own life than I ever would have expected." The 88-year-old Cook has spent the last several years on her own concerts and solo albums, including "Mostly Sondheim," ''Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall" and "Barbara Cook's Broadway."

Online: http:// www.BarbaraCookThenandNow.com

March 3, 2016

Broadway Royalty Barbara Cook to Bring New Show Off Broadway

By Gordon Cox

MEDIAPUNCH/REX SHUTTERSTOCK

Longtime Broadway favorite Barbara Cook will bring an evening of songs and stories to Off Broadway this spring in “Barbara Cook: Then and Now,” a new production conceived by James Lapine (“Into the Woods,” “Sunday in the Park With George”) and directed by 10-time Tony winner Tommy Tune.

Cook (“The Music Man,” “Candide”) has come up a lot in conversations around Broadway lately, thanks to the current Roundabout Theater Company revival of “She Loves Me,” the 1963 musical with which Cook is closely associated — particularly for her signature song from that musical, “Vanilla Ice Cream.” (In the new revival, Laura Benanti plays the role that Cook created.) Although “Then and Now” shares the same name as Cook’s memoir, which is due out in June, the show’s creators are billing it as loosely inspired by the process of writing the memoir, rather than as something based specifically on the upcoming book.

Now one of the biggest names among cabaret performers, Cook collaborated with Lapine on her last Broadway outing, “Sondheim on Sondheim,” the 2010 revue of Stephen Sondheim songs (of which Cook has become

known as a prime interpreter). Tommy Tune, who won the lifetime achievement Tony Award last year, is currently performing his show “Taps, Tunes and Tall Tales” around the country.

“Then and Now” will play a limited run of 65 performances during the lead-up to the book release, with previews starting April 13 prior to a May 4 opening at Off Broadway’s New World Stages. Broadway vet Roy Furman (“The Color Purple,” “An American in Paris”) produces in association with Sandy Robertson and Luigi Caiola.

March 3, 2016 Broadway Legend Barbara Cook Sets Musical Memoir The Tony-winning star will play 65 performances this spring in a solo vehicle timed to the release of her autobiography, conceived by James Lapine and directed by Tommy Tune.

Barbara Cook John M. Heller/Getty Images

One of the most beloved interpreters of the American musical theater canon will return to the New York stage this spring, when Barbara Cook: Then and Now plays a 10-week engagement.

Conceived by James Lapine and directed by Tommy Tune — who between them have 13 Tony Awards — the musical memoir will provide a showcase for Cook to reflect back on a legendary career spanning more than half a century, from her days as an ingenue in Broadway's Golden Age to the present.

The show will coincide with the June publication from HarperCollins of Cook's autobiography, which bears the same title.

"As I began to write my upcoming memoir, I was surprised by how moved I was in revisiting my early years and later my alcoholic years," said Cook in a statement. "I've always felt that the narrative of my life came through many of the songs I sing, both tunes I've introduced and favorites that have spoken to me through different chapters of my life. I'm hoping this evening will be a live companion piece to the book that taught me more about my own life than I ever would have expected."

Cook made her Broadway debut in 1951 in Flahooley, and went on to star in the original productions of Plain and Fancy, Candide, The Music Man (for which she won a Tony in 1958) and She Loves Me, among others, as well as revivals of Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I and Show Boat. Her most recent Broadway appearance was in Sondheim on Sondheim in 2010.

As a cabaret and concert performer, she has played major venues around the world, including seven returns to Carnegie Hall, most recently for her 85th birthday celebration concert. She was an honoree at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.

The new show will give audiences an opportunity to hear Cook's warm soprano in a more intimate setting, at off-Broadway's New World Stages, where the limited engagement begins performances April 13 for an official May 4 opening, running through June 26. Roy Furman is producing, in association with Sandy Robertson and Luigi Caiola.

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March 4-6, 2016