Off Broadway, From Feminists to Fireworks

A weird and wonderful selection of Off Broadway plays this month. Five full reviews below, right after these summaries.

GLORIA: A LIFE Christine Lahti plays the feminist hero Gloria Steinem. Best part: Her relationship with her troubled mother. Worst: Doing an ordinary audience talkback and calling it Act II.

KENNEDY: BOBBY’S LAST CRUSADE Yep, 50 years have passed since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. David Arrow brings his 1968 campaign alive again. Best part: Freckles the dog.

INDIA PALE ALE A Punjabi-American family don’t understand why their grown daughter wants to leave home and open a bar. Then Old World values clash with America’s fatal flaws. Best part: The Bollywood dance number.

LEWISTON/CLARKSTON What wonders have Lewis and Clark’s explorations wrought? In these two one-acts, all we can see are cheap fireworks and big-box stores. Verdict: Loved Lewiston.

BERNIE AND MIKEY’S TRIP TO THE MOON An Italian-American family with a brain-damaged daughter compete to be noblest. Best part: Meeting Jeff Goldblum.

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FULL REVIEWS START HERE

GLORIA: A LIFE

Daryl Roth Theater, 101 East 15th Street, Union Square, gloriatheplay.com. 2 hours. Open run.

BACK TO THE ‘70s Christine Lahti as Gloria Steinem in “Gloria: A Life.”

SARA HOLDREN OF NEW YORK MAGAZINE called it “a unique, deeply moving experience.” Jesse Green (who, through no fault of his own, is a man) of The New York Times called it a “paint-by-numbers portrait.” It pains me greatly to say this, but I agree mostly with the guy.

MIRROR MIRROR Lahti in “Gloria: A Life,” next to a projection of Steinem.

For those of you visiting from Neptune: Gloria Steinem was the most important American feminist of the 20th century. And so far, at age 84, she is going strong in the 21st.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, she went to Smith College and became a journalist. One of her most famous works for a 1963 issue of Show magazine in which sent went undercover as a Playboy Club bunny. She helped found New York magazine and was the driving force behind the founding of Ms. magazine in 1970. If she had never said anything more intellectual than “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” that would have been enough..

THIS IS WHAT STRONG LOOKS LIKE Gloria Steinem in an undated photograph from her website.

So I had high, if not exalted, hopes for this show, written by Emily Mann, the longtime artistic director of the esteemed McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, and directed by Diane Paulus, the artistic director at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, whose previous triumphs have included “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” and the 2013 revival of “Pippin.”

And I’ve loved Christine Lahti, who plays Steinem, since “Swing Shift” (the 1984 World War II home-front movie). Lahti is very good here, but her feminist sincerity feels — acted. When she stands onstage (actually the theater floor; it’s an in-the-round production) doing a black-power salute with Fedna Jaquet, playing Angela Davis, it’s inspiring until your eyes glide to the projection above them — the real Steinem and the real Davis in the same pose. That, my friends, was what fierce looked like.

YOU HAD TO BE THERE Lahti and

“Gloria: A Life” is far from a one-woman show, and the performance-impersonations add a good deal, They include the gleefully loudmouthed ‘70s NYC politician Bella Abzug and the Native American leader Wilma Mankiller.

SISTERHOOD ACT From left, Emily Mann, Diane Paulus, Lahti, Steinem and the producer Daryl Roth on opening night.

You know, though, what I really hated about “Gloria: A Life”? All the press-release descriptions “explained” that Act I would be Steinem’s story and that Act II would be a special roundtable workshop, dealing with the audience members’ own lives and experiences..

Ladies, it was just another after-theater Q&A talkback. These things almost always go wrong because the “real people” in the audience love hearing themselves talk so much more than they love learning anything new from the cast or crew. As a critic, I almost always don’t attend them because they can color my impression of the production. But in this case I was tricked.

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INDIA PALE ALE

City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Midtown indiapalealeplay.com, 2 hours. Limited run: Closed on Nov. 18.

YOU’RE LUCKY I’M SPEAKING PUNJABI, MISSIE! Dadi (Sophia Mahmud), far right, makes a speech in an early scene from “India Pale Ale.”

UNLESS YOU’D READ the notes in the Playbill, you’d never know that Jaclyn Backhaus’s “India Pale Ale” took place in Wisconsin. You’ve got six characters onstage, with names including Basminder, Deepa and Vishal. An enormous bowl of dough is being shaped into patties by hand by two women wearing head coverings and sitting on a blanket (bedspread? tablecloth?) on the floor.

HAPPY COUPLE Sridharan and Shah

These are the Batra family and their friends, Indian-Americans who were born in the United States (even the older generation) and have one thing on their minds — the engagement party for young Iggy (Sathya Sridharan), who calls most other men “bro",” and his giddy fiancée, Lovi (Lipica Shah). It should be noted that the young Indian-American guys call each other “bro.”

We know the more central plot point from the beginning, though. Their daughter, Basminder, known as Baz (Shazi Raja), is preparing to leave home and just waiting for the right moment to announce it. She’s moving to Madison (which is only an hour away, but it might as well be across an ocean, as far as her parents are concerned) and opening a bar. She even has investors.

SET ‘EM UP, JOE Nate Miller as a bar customer and Shazi Raja as Baz, the proud new owner.

HER LAST ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP didn’t work out, and she’s 30. And for God’s sake, her brother has invited her ex, Vishal (Nik Sadhnani), to be part of his wedding.

There’s an even bigger plot development at the end of Act I, one that reminds us of the America we live in and the news stories of violence that we read and see videotape of every week. And that throws almost everyone in a new direction.

BOLLYWOOD MOMENT In Act I, most of the cast gets jiggy.

BACKHAUS’S SCRIPT IS well structured but simplistically written. The dialogue is so basic and overly direct that it takes all the skill and energy of this nine-person cast and its director, Will Davis to make up for it. Even then, it doesn’t fully succeed. The “What will it take?” speech at the end, delivered by Purva Bedi, who plays Baz’s mother, is well meant and certainly on target — but definite overkill.

There are sterling moments, though. At one point, the cast breaks out into a dance number and somehow manages to convey the same joy that big-budget Bollywood movies do. (The director, Patel, also choreographed.) At a family gathering, Dadi (Sophia Mahmud), the grandmother, makes a speech (supposedly in Punjabi, but we hear it in English), and the father (Alok Tewari) translates it into English for the other family members. He makes a few well-considered changes, especially when Dadi makes some unflattering comments about Lovi.

THREE WOMEN From left, Purva Bedi, Raja and Angel Desai.

IN THE FIRST SCENE, a family friend (Angel Desai) mentions, “You had the pirate ancestor".” So we’ve been sort of waiting for the pirate ship scene — which does not take place in Wisconsin but on the Atlantic in 1823. It has its weaknesses, but the costumes (by Arnulfo Maldonado) are fabulous and the ending made me teary.

Neil Patel’s minimalist set design works flawlessly. And Nate Miller as the only non-Indian American (one of Baz’s bar customers) redeems Anglo Americans, after a few moments of cultural insensitivity, by proving himself honest, efficient and caring.

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BERNIE AND MIKEY’S

TRIP TO THE MOON

59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Upper East Side, 59e59.org. 2 hours. Limited run: Closes on Dec. 2.

“BERNIE AND MIKEY’S TRIP TO THE MOON” is a cute title, but the metaphor doesn’t quite work for me. Plus: I assumed/inferred that Bernie and Mikey were both guys. Little did I know that Bernie was Bernadette (Stephanie Gould), the lovable just-grown-up kid sister in a family whose biggest problem is her.

Actually, every one of the seven characters in this sweetly charming play by Scott Aiello is lovable, which goes a long way toward TKTK. Bernie, who had encephalitis when she was 2, is one of the lucky ones who lived, but that brain damage means she’ll have to be taken care of by someone else all her life. And who will that be? And how do we feel about it?

Mikey (Forrest Malloy), her older brother, is a sweetheart, but he has concerns of his own. Like Laura (Ismenia Mendes), a very pretty co-worker who is being mistreated by her boyfriend. And his conflicts about leaving home and living elsewhere, at least for a while.

Gladys (Margo Singaliese), the mom, is the stoic, capable, unflappable chief of the home front. Mike Sr. (Jordan Lage), the strong dad, spends much of his time running the family-owned bar, ably and charmingly assisted by his uncle Ski (Stephen D’Ambrose), who’s been around forever and knows how to throw out a drunk customer without incident.

Not a lot goes on in their modest home. Bernie worships Elvis Presley and spends a lot of time reading a book about him and singing his hits. (The music during scene changes is all-Elvis-every-time.) The phone rings a lot, because a young male friend of Bernie’s is obsessed with her and leaves more messages per day than Donald Trump writes tweets.

The boy’s name is Jeff Goldblum (Benjamin Rosloff) — not the Hollywood actor, just a nice kid whose brain-function problems are much like Bernie’s. But he knows what boyfriends and girlfriends do, he says. The scene in which Mike Sr. and others try to determine exactly what Jeff means when he said he’s made Bernie his girlfriend is a quietly brilliant piece of tact, teasing, desperation and honor.

Claire Karpen directed what may have seemed like a challenging script, since there are no villains and only one real crisis (in Act II), and delivered real warmth. Produced by Strangemen Theater Company, this is the play’s world premiere.

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LEWISTON/CLARKSTON

Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, rattlestick.org. 3 hours 30 minutes (including dinner break). Limited run: Closes on Dec. 16.

J.D., MY PRESS-NIGHT GUEST, complained that the two plays had nothing in common except the fact that the characters were descendants of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who set out in 1804 to explore the land west of the Mississippi River. But Samuel D. Hunter, the gifted playwright (who also gave us “The Whale,” The Harvest” and “A Perfect Boise”), probably had something bigger, broader and bleaker in mind.

“I do think these plays speak to one another in quiet ways,” Hunter told Eric Grode of The New York Times last month.

Just to keep things honest, these characters aren’t exactly direct descendants of the two famous men. They’re said to be the great-great-great-grandchildren of their cousins or something like that. And in the first play, “Lewiston,” one is just about to sell off the last 20 acres of her family land.

In Lewiston, which is a small Idaho town, all that grandeur and wonder and curiosity have beget a couple, Alice (Kristin Griffith) and Connor (Arnie Burton) — and they aren’t even a “real” couple — who sell cheap fireworks at a roadside stand on holidays. But they don’t sell much of it.

Their only customer on this day is a casually dressed young woman named Marnie (Leah Karpel), who they learn has made a whole lot of money by developing and then selling what she describes as “an urban farm in Seattle.” They also learn that she’s Alice’s long-lost granddaughter, and she wants to save the family’s legacy.

Marnie’s mom (Alice’s daughter) committed suicide when her daughter was 8 but has left behind some haunting audiotapes about her travels. Some sound like “The Blair Witch Project”; others are vivid and insightful (“I can see two separate thunderstorms”).

Marnie does not eat meat (of course!), so Connor microwaves some leftover Tater Tots for her. Characters complain that life offers no purpose and no causality. Alice doesn’t fear death so much anymore, she says, now that she’s old, maybe because she hasn’t found anything that great about life. Every line and every movement are wrapped in pain and vulnerability, and Stacey DeRosier’s lighting is brilliant.

Then the audiences disperses for a dinner break. We had barbecued chicken, potato salad, cole slaw and dinner rolls and met a Manhattan mother and daughter who were big Hunter fans.

After that, the audience reseats itself (the whole configuration has been changed) for “Clarkston,” which appears to take place in a Costco in a small Washington town. The descendant in this case is Jake (Noah Robbins), a skinny, barely adult male who has come out west to explore his heritage and look for meaning.

I don’t mean to judge Jake, but he’s from Connecticut and majored in post-colonial gender studies at Bennington. Not to say that he doesn’t have problems: He suffers from Huntington’s, the progressive brain disorder.

His co-worker Chris (Edmund Donovan) has problems of his own, grittier and more immediate ones, like a drug-addicted mother (Heidi Armbruster) whose solution to any big problem is to move to a new town. The crucial plot development is that the two young men accidentally drop and break a $5,000 television set.

It’s an upside-down world when a happy ending may require betraying your own mother. And where Americans believe it’s a terrible time to be alive because there’s “nothing left to discover.” Yet somebody here has never even seen the ocean, until the last scene. And even that has been reduced to a selfie

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KENNEDY: BOBBY’S LAST CRUSADE

Theater at St. Clement’s, 423 West 46th Street, Theater District, kennedybobbyslastcrusade.com. 1 hour 30 minutes (no intermission).. Limited run: Closes on Dec. 9.

WHEN I ARRIVED AT St. Clement’s for “Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade,” it was 1968 again. A photo of the Beatles (at the height of their coolness) greeted me, as did an usher, who appeared to be dressed like Edie Sedgwick in her Warhol days. Country Joe and the Fish were singing “What are we fighting for?/ Don’t ask me. I don’t give a damn./ Next stop is Vietnam.” Best of times. Worst of times.

In his dark suit, white shirt and narrow necktie, David Arrow (in photo) looks — from most angles) — and sounds like Bobby Kennedy, and the show begins with his assassination exactly 50 years ago, then flashes back to the birth of his 1968 presidential campaign. So the script begins and ends with “On to Chicago!,” which were Kennedy’s final public words before he left the stage and was murdered while taking a shortcut exit through a hotel kitchen.

If “Bobby’s Last Crusade” consisted only of excerpts from Kennedy’s speeches during the last months of his life, that would have been worth going to the theater for. How remarkable to be reminded that within some of our lifetimes, we heard politicians make their points by quoting Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristotle, Jefferson and Shaw! It seems so distant from our present reality that it feels like a visit to outer space. (Still, the best words of wisdom may come from Kennedy’s father, Joe Sr., whom he quotes as saying, “After you’ve done the best you can, to hell with it!”)

Kennedy talks in his campaign speeches about race and poverty and unequal opportunity and gun violence, and he offers a little plus ca change with complaints like “Our government has been lying to us” and “Much that we all cherish may be in danger.”

But between speeches, he talks about personal things like how he met his wife, Ethel,; what his friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy (in photo) was like; and his fans’ peculiar habit of stealing his shoes..

It’s reassuring to learn that he spent that last day of his life at the director John Frankenheimer’s beach house, where he was staying, and that many of his children and the family dog, Freckles, were around.

The director Eric Nightengale;s staging is full of energy and purpose. James Morgan’s scenic design works well as an all-purpose speechmaking venue, the stage floor scattered with confetti, newspapers and campaign signs.

If this one-act one-man show has a high point, it is the speech Kennedy made to followers letting them know about the death that night of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That night, Kennedy himself had only two months to live. He was 42.