We’re always astounded by the number of shows out there, most of them blessedly far from the lights and crowds of Times Square, at least in spirit. This week has exactly the head-scratching mixture of classic and wacky, earnest and ironic, polished and rough, that we adore, so without further chatter, here are our picks of performances we think are worth checking out.
First, with the return of a bit of cold weather and the approach of Valentine’s Day, AJ Raath’s modification of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale seems an appropriate choice. Where Shakes wrote of a King Leontes and Queen Hermione and their romantic difficulties, Raath’s Winter gives us Leonard and Helen in the modern day, and the story of what happens to them when Leonard leaves Helen after she gets pregnant suddenly, spooking him. OK, so maybe it’s not a traditional choice of a lovey-dovey date play, with the play’s self-description suggesting that unlike in the Shakespeare, here “redemption may just be a fantasy”…but people should think about the darker side of love on Valentine’s Day, too, if you ask us.
Meanwhile, another adaptation to consider has source material that’s about as far from the Bard as it gets: Point Break, the cheeseball 1991 Keanu Reeves flick about a new FBI agent who goes infiltrates a group of surfers to see if they’re the “Ex-Presidents” gang he suspects them to be. What we have now is Point Break Live! Needless to say (we hope), the show is an “absurdist” take on the blockbuster; it originated in Seattle to some acclaim and is now at Galapagos for 6 performances. It promises not only car chases, surfing, and two (two!) big skydiving scenes, but also each night the role of Keanu is played by someone from the audience. So if you’re bored with just sitting around when you go to the theater, this is the show for you.
Moving to all-original stuff, Emerging Artists Theatre has a “Triple Threat” on in February. This is an array of three new plays: Kathleen Warnock’s Rock the Line (about seven hardcore music fans waiting to meet their favorite singer), Peter Levine’s The Kitchen Table (a coming of age story beginning with a 1950s Brooklyn Jewish boyhood and including the main character’s loss of his whole family); and Gregory Fletcher’s Edenville (a rom-com about Jules’ “rollercoaster ride” toward finding Mr. Right; the play first appared in an EAT workshop last year). We almost always like EAT’s productions, and these look likely to live up to standards.
Details & More after the jump...
For Black History Month, there are a lot more African-American-oriented plays out there than usual (it doesn’t take much, but still) and most of them emphasize the “history” part of the celebration. New Federal Theatre’s Real Black Men Don’t Sit Crosslegged on the Floor, a “collage in blues” by Malik, approaches the black experience a little more innovatively, telling the stories of eight very varied men and how they deal with life in a hostile world. It gets points for the title, of course, but it also sounds like a refreshingly different approach to a topic all too easily dealt with in a tiresome self-righteous fashion.
Speaking of topics that invite rhetorical grandstanding, Lemkin’s House, by Catherine Filloux, is about Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the word genocide and spent his life in courts trying to have genocide recognized as a crime on the international scene. The play obviously deals with plenty of tough issues, and has a clear ethical message to deliver, but it’s at the 78th Street Theatre Lab, which stages pretty consistently interesting fare, so we’ll hazard a guess that this one doesn’t overreach itself and will be engaging as well as thought-provoking.
Finally, in the departments of both “completely different from the above” and “what we would see if we had money for a ticket,” Kismet is the latest entry in the NY City Center Encores series. It features the current top leading musical man Brian Stokes Mitchell with Marin Mazzie in a mystical “Arabian Night”-type romance/caper set in Baghdad; the story is based on a play by Edward Knoblock, and the music originated in themes by Alexander Borodin. If you can afford to go, tell us how it was; otherwise we’ll see you in the audience of Point Break Live, where we’ll fight you for the right to play Keanu.
Details: Winter is at the Looking Glass Theatre, 422 W. 57th, through Feb. 26. This Fri. and Sat. it’s at 8 and Sat. also at 2; tickets are at Theatermania, where you can see the full calendar.
Point Break Live! is at Galapagos Art Space, 70 N. 6th St. in Brooklyn, through Feb. 25, Fri. and Sat. 8:30pm. Tickets via Smarttix.
EAT’s Triple Threat starts tonight and runs through Feb. 26. See the website for tickets and showtimes.
Real Black Men… is at the Henry Street Settlement, 465 Grand St., through Feb. 26. Shows are Thurs.-Fri. 7:30, Sat. 8, Sun. 3. Tickets via Ticket Central.
Lemkin’s House is at the 78th Street Theatre Lab, 236 W. 78th St., starting Thurs. and going through Feb. 26. Shows are Thurs.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 3pm. Tickets via Smarttix.
Kismet is at City Center (W. 55th between 6th and 7th Aves.) this weekend only, Thurs.-Sat. at 8pm, Sat. at 2pm and Sun. at 6:30pm. Tickets here.
