Immigration! Nazis! Cultural shifts! And the United States Constitution itself. This collection of recently opened Off and Off Off Broadway productions couldn’t be much more political, just like the world we all live in now.
Read on — about “Final Follies,” a trio of A.R. Gurmey one-acts; “Mother Night,” which takes Kurt Vonnegut’s 1960s novel to the Upper East Side; Aasif Mandvi’s encore run of “Sakina’s Restaurant”; and Heidi Schreck’s all-too-timely “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
PAGING STORMY DANIELS In “Final Follies,” Colin Hanlon plays a WASP who decides to become a porn star and grows fond of a company employee (Rachel Nicks).
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FINAL FOLLIES
Off Broadway. Cherry Lane Theater. 38 Commerce Street, Greenwich Village. Limited run: Closed Oct. 21, 2018.
A.R. Gurney (in photo) knew about white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He specialized in writing about them for the stage (“The Dining Room,” “The Cocktail Hour,” “Love Letters”). Primary Stages recently honored Gurney — who was 86 when he died, less than a year and a half ago — with a production at the Cherry Lane Theater of some of his latest and earliest short works.
“Final Follies” is the overall title, as well as the first play. Our protagonist is Nelson (Colin Hanlon), a charming WASP bachelor who has failed at every job his rich grandfather has gotten for him and has now decided to try acting — in porn. Or, as Tanisha (Rachel Nicks), who sits at the front desk of the film company, calls the product: “discreet adult videos that have therapeutic value.” Nelson believes his people, the WASPs, are a dying culture. At one point he announces, “I want to explore my roots before they rot away.”
HEY, THAT’S MY GRANDSON! NAKED! Greg Mullavey as a wealthy WASP grandfather checking out a little video sex, and Mark Junek in “Final Follies.”
His more traditional brother, Walter (Mark Junek), tries to persuade Nelson to abandon this new career direction before people find out about it; then he fights back by showing one of Nelson’s “therapeutic videos” to their grandfather (Greg Mullavey), but the older man doesn’t react the way Walter expects. There’s a happy if somewhat disturbing ending. Certain guys always win.
The second Gurney play is “The Rape of Bunny Stuntz,” with Deborah Rush as Bunny.
DON’T INTERRUPT ME. I’M ON A STAGE. Deborah Rush, in floral print, as Bunny in “The Rape of Bunny Stuntz.” Betsy Aidem, left, tells her about the man in the red Impala.
In “The Rape of Bunny Stuntz,” Bunny (Deborah Rush), looking just the way she means to in a blond bouffant flip and a blue floral print shirtwaist, is supposed to be leading some kind of meeting. The problem is that all her materials are inside a locked box that she’s brought, and she can’t find the key. (She is vehemently unwilling to wing it.) And while someone is sent to get the extra key from Bunny’s husband at home, the evening falls apart.
First, Howie (Piter Marek) persuades a lot of audience members to kill some time by going to the basement and having a party. He has plenty of takers. Meanwhile, the spinsterly Wilma (Betsy Aidem) informs Bunny that there’s a gentleman outside in a red Impala who (a) is waiting for her and (b) says he has the key. Bunny plays dumb at first but gradually confesses to knowing the man. Well. Eventually the box is opened, and symbolism rears its well-coiffed head.
My favorite in “Bunny Stuntz”? Aidem as Wilma.
Aidem is back in the third play, “The Love Course,” about two mature professors co-teaching a course on literary love stories and dealing with emotions on the last day of class.
THE TRUE MEANING OF CO-ED Betsy Aidem and Piter Marek as two professors sharing teaching duties — and feelings — in “The Love Course.”
Professor Burgess (Marek) is her distinguished co-teacher, and he sets her off when he announces that he has to leave class early (on the last day!) to attend a curriculum meeting. This does not sit well with Professor Carroway (Aidem).
Gurney orchestrates a dizzying series of entrances and exits for each of the four characters. The other two are a student (Nicks) and her boyfriend (Hanlon, who is adorable in the role), who has accompanied her to the last class. There’s a solidly funny ending, but the greatest joys may be watching the co-professors act out a scene from “Antony and Cleopatra” (with ever so many parallels to their relationship) as well as the final romantic confrontation of Cathy and Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights.”
David Saint directed all three plays.
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MOTHER NIGHT
Off Broadway, 59 E 59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Midtown, 59e59.org Limited run: Closes on Nov. 3
NAZIS GOTTA PARTY Cocktail hour in Berlin with most of the cast of “Mother Night,” based on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel.
SOMEWHERE IN MY UPPER West Side apartment, even now, is a battered mass-market paperback copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Mother Night,” published in 1961. I read it later, during college, I think. I know that it had a swastika on the cover.
But going in to see the play based on it and staged at 59E59 Theaters, I could not have even remembered what it was about.
I can say, however, that Brian Katz, who wrote the adaptation and directs the production, has done an impressive job of turning the novel into a stage work. Vonnegut’s surreal style isn’t always easy to capture.
Gabriel Grilli (at desk in photo) stars as Howard Campbell, a seemingly nice American guy who finds himself writing Nazi propaganda and feeling just fine about that.
ZUSAMMEN Howard and Helga (Grilli and Trish Lindstrom), together again. Or are they?
There are six other cast members, most of whom play multiple roles, but the most important one to remember is Trish Lindstrom, who plays Helga, Howard’s blond, zaftig (a little), passionate Aryan love. (Helga has a kid sister, also played by Lindstrom. She has a major crush on Howard, which becomes significant later in the play.)
PSSSST Grilli with Andrea Gallo, who has a job offer for him.
THE OTHER IMPORTANT THING to know is that Howard becomes a double agent. When he broadcasts his reports, certain words and pauses and coughs are sending important messages to the Allies.
Unfortunately, very few people know about this arrangement, among them his contact (Andrea Gallo) and FDR. The president. Who dies shortly before World War II ends. Life for Howard becomes very complicated, and we see why Vonnegut once said that the moral of “Mother Night” was “You are what you pretend to be.”
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SAKINA’S RESTAURANT
Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, ticketmaster.com. Limited run: Closes Nov. 11.
POSTER BOY Aasif Mandvi is starring in an encore run of “Sakina’s Restaurant,” his 1998 one-man show, at the Minetta Lane Theater.
EXACTLY 20 YEARS AGO, The New York Times assigned me to review something called “Sakina’s Restaurant,” a one-man Off Broadway show starring an unknown young actor from India named Aasif Mandvi. I liked it a lot. Mandvi went on to bigger, probably much more lucrative things: a Merchant Ivory film, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” prestigious dramatic stage roles like the one in Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced,” which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for drama. And now he’s back with a reprise of the show that started it all.
FRIEND OF JON Jon Stewart and Mandvi analyze a news story Comedy Central-style back in the day.
The critics love “Sakina’s Restaurant” again. The Wrap called it astonishing and a tour de force. The Times (a new critic — time goes on) found it more relevant than ever in 2018. To me, it didn’t feel quite like the triumphant return that Mandvi deserved — partly because it worked better as theater-in-the-round than on the Minetta Lane’s standard proscenium stage — but it’s still outstanding.
And it is particularly satisfying that there’s a set this time (by Wilson Chin), the Sixth Street Indian restaurant where our hero goes to work as a waiter. Mandvi, at 52, can still pull off being the wide-eyed young man who both narrates and acts out the story as numerous characters, male and female. And the waiter-customer exchange about ordering “No. 5” is still my favorite joke.
ARCHIVES | 1998
THEATER REVIEW; Azgi and Ali's Excellent Adventure
By ANITA GATESJULY 1, 1998
The wide-eyed young man with a suitcase is an innocent soul. ''I like hamburger, baseball and Mr. Bob Dylan,'' he announces in an eager-to-please, Indian-accented voice. Soon he reveals, ''I am the first person in my entire family to fly on an airplane'' and pauses before adding, ''I hope no crashing.''
That early scene in ''Sakina's Restaurant'' is funny and endearing, but it's only a hint of what Aasif Mandvi can do -- and does -- in this wonderful one-man show, which continues through July 12 at the American Place Theater. And while the characters are living through the Indian immigrant experience, its revelations apply to anyone who feels the pull of two cultures and to a thousand variations on a loss of innocence.
HARD-HITTING ROLE Mandvi, second from left, in Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Disgraced,” at Lincoln Center.
Azgi, the young man with a fear of flying, goes to New York to work on East Sixth Street in the restaurant of the play's title. In the beginning, when he doesn't understand something, he learns that saying ''Yes, yes, yes, you are absolutely right'' works wonders. But soon he's confident enough to argue with a restaurant patron who asks to have his dish made spicy: 5 on a scale of 1 to 5. ''Look, man, I'm from India,'' says Azgi, ''but even in India no one asks for No. 5.''
AZGI REVISITED A scene from the 2018 production of “Sakina’s Restaurant.” The set is by Wilson Chin.
MR. MANDVI THEN DRAPES a pink scarf over his shoulders and becomes Farrida, the wife of the restaurant's owner, saying, among other things, ''This was not supposed to be my life.'' He becomes the owner, Hakim, not by wearing a necktie but by the process of putting the tie on throughout the scene. Hakim is trying to convey some hard realities to his daughter, Sakina. ''You will never be an American girl,'' he tells her and reminds her that he is here, working hard, just ''so that you can grow up in the richest country in the world.'' The telephone rings, and Mr. Mandvi shows what an amazing actor he is, conveying the emotional complexity of shifting gears to accept a dinner reservation in the middle of a tirade.
PRETTY IN BATIK Mandvi as a very Americanized teenage girl in the new staging of “Sakina’s Restaurant.”
Mr. Mandvi also becomes the Americanized Sakina (''Tom, this is retarded,'' she says to her boyfriend); her little brother, Samir (''I hate coming to this stupid country,'' he says in India, where he is attending his grandmother's funeral), and Ali, a Muslim pre-med student (who offers $50 to a prostitute named Angel and sort of hopes that doesn't buy much). Ali imagines saying something cruel to his parents, made more vile because of the crude English words he uses. He is horrified by how debased he has become, that such words would spring to mind.
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WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME
Off Broadway, New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, nytw.org. 1 hour 30 minutes. No intermission. Limited run: Closes on Nov. 4..
SPEAKING OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT … Heidi Schreck re-creates a high school debate in “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY loved “What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s almost-solo show in the East Village. Everybody except my press-night guest RR. He was good with Schreck’s re-creation of a high school American Legion-sponsored debate about the United States Constitution in which Schreck plays her teenage self. But he grew impatient when the nerdy American Legion guy (Mike Iveson) changed characters and began talking about the difficulties of a gay adolescence and how he got through it. (RR is a gay man himself and may have just felt he’d heard it all one time too many.)
POINT OF ORDER Mike Iveson plays the American Legion debate moderator and also has a coming-out monologue.
The rest of the audience seemed to disagree with him. Schreck is charming as a teenager who’s really more interested in witches, theater and Patrick Swayze than the federal government. But winning the debate could mean some scholarship money. So she talks a lot about Amendment 14 (which has things to say about American citizenship and which a certain 45th President of the United States has been talking about overturning).
At times it feels as if we’re all students again, being tricked by clever theater people into learning something. But by God, it’s done well and the young Heidi has some stories to share — many of which speak to the role of women in the 200+ years the Constitution has been in effect. Her great-great-grandmother was a mail-order bride who died at 36 of melancholia. Her grandmother’s logger husband was killed; she remarried, only to have the new guy beat her regularly and sexually abuse her children.
Two standouts: The young girl who appears late in the one-act show to debate against Schreck. (I saw the charming Rosdely Ciprian in the role.) And an almost painfully entertaining audio recording of Supreme Court justices discussing contraception.
Oliver Butler directed.
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