The New Yorker 03 January 2022

86 Pages·2022·32.96 MB·english

by  The New Yorkers

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JANUARY 3 & 10, 2022
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Elizabeth Kolbert on the devastation of seabed mining;
queering “The Simpsons”; bayou-reclamation ramblers;
“Skeleton Crew”; Joan Didion and the purpose of writing.
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Michael Schulman 20 Larger than Life
Bridget Everett’s journey from alt-cabaret to HBO.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Teddy Wayne 25 Constitutional Crisis No. 1
DEPT. OF DIPLOMACY
Robin Wright 26 Overmatch
Iran’s uncontainable missile strategy.
PROFILES
Evan Osnos 32 maga-Phone
Dan Bongino and the evolution of Trumpist talk radio.
LETTER FROM FULING
Peter Hessler 44 Going Up
For China’s boom generation, success comes with sadness.
FICTION
Jennifer Egan 56 “What the Forest Remembers”
THE CRITICS
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Parul Sehgal 62 Why our obsession with trauma is ruining narratives.
BOOKS
Elizabeth Kolbert 68 The roots of political polarization.
71 Briefly Noted
PODCAST DEPT.
Rachel Syme 74 “70 Over 70.”
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 76 Claire Chase reimagines the flute.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 78 “Parallel Mothers.”
POEMS
Tadeusz Dąbrowski 36 “Bouquet”
Amy Woolard 50 “Wage”
COVER
Anthony Russo “Shelter”
DRAWINGS Liana Finck, Ken Levine, Julia Suits, William Haefeli, Farley Katz, Roz Chast,
Mick Stevens, Frank Cotham, Adam Douglas Thompson, Sophie Lucido Johnson and
Sammi Skolmoski, P. C. Vey, Michael Maslin, Ellis Rosen, Asher Perlman, Sarah Kempa, Christopher Weyant,
Sara Lautman, José Arroyo, Joe Dator, Lonnie Millsap SPOTS Christoph Niemann
CONTRIBUTORS
AS FAITHFULLY
Evan Osnos (“MAGA-Phone,” p. 32), a Robin Wright (“Overmatch,” p. 26), a
AS THE TIDES
staff writer, covers politics and foreign contributing writer, has written for The
affairs for the magazine. His latest New Yorker since 1988. She is the au-
book is “Wildland: The Making of thor of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and
America’s Fury.” Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”
Jennifer Egan (Fiction, p. 56) is the Michael Schulman (“Larger than Life,”
author of, most recently, “Manhattan p. 20), a staff writer, has published “Her
Beach.” Her new novel, “The Candy Again: Becoming Meryl Streep.”
House,” will be out in April.
Amy Woolard (Poem, p. 50) is a legal-
Peter Hessler (“Going Up,” p. 44) became aid attorney. Her début poetry collec-
a staff writer in 2000. His books include tion, “Neck of the Woods,” came out
“River Town” and “The Buried: An Ar- in 2020.
chaeology of the Egyptian Revolution.”
Anthony Russo (Cover), an illustrator,
Parul Sehgal (A Critic at Large, p. 62), has been contributing covers to the
a staff writer, teaches creative writing magazine since 2003.
at New York University.
Robyn Weintraub (Puzzles & Games
Tadeusz Dąbrowski (Poem, p. 36) is a Dept.) has been a crossword construc-
Polish writer whose work has been tor since 2010. Her puzzles have also
widely translated. Two of his poetry appeared in the Times.
collections, “Black Square” and “Posts,”
have been released in English. Nathan Heller (Postscript, p. 18), a staff
writer since 2013, is at work on “The
Caitlin Reid (Puzzles & Games Dept.) Private Order,” a book about the Bay
began constructing crossword puzzles Area and the past fifty years of Amer-
in 2017. ican history.
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RIGOLETTO
THE MAIL
NEW YEAR’S EVE GALA PREMIERE
ON STAGE DEC 31–JAN 29
WHAT IS A THOUGHT?
historical detail to situate this “West
Side Story” in late-nineteen-fifties Lin-
James Somers’s piece about using brain coln Square—such as a billboard adver-
imaging to read human thoughts paints tising new apartments—as “cute.” If
a rosy picture of the potential of tech- Lane is looking for realism and edginess
nologies like functional magnetic res- in a work that is a tribute to “Romeo
onance imaging (“Head Space,” De- and Juliet,” he should find Kushner’s
cember 6th). Somers says that we’ve scene choice compelling: the allusion
discovered what thoughts “really are: to the era’s urban-renewal projects sheds
patterns of neural activation that cor- light on the economic and territorial
respond to points in meaning space.” forces that the fictional Jets and Sharks
But, of course, the mind-brain rela- would have faced.
1
tionship is considerably more complex. Emily Faxon
Two mental states might be intrinsi- San Francisco, Calif.
cally identical, though one is a mem-
CONSTANTINE’S CHRIST
ory and the other is dreamed up. A
thought-decoding device would have
trouble distinguishing between the two. Joan Acocella, in her fascinating arti-
Revealingly, Somers compares the cle about how the Rosetta Stone was
history of thought decoding to the deciphered, notes that the Roman Em-
breaking of the genetic code by James peror Constantine “converted to Chris-
Watson and Francis Crick. But, in tianity, in 312 A.D.” (Books, Novem-
the past few decades, genetic research ber 29th). As Diarmaid MacCulloch
has shown that one cannot trust a writes in “A History of Christianity,”
reading of a nucleotide sequence to Constantine has “often been seen as
reveal phenotypic traits. As it turns undergoing a ‘conversion’ to Christi-
out, even a relatively simple trait— anity,” but that word choice is “unfor-
such as height in humans—is not en- tunate” because it “has all sorts of mod-
coded in one or a few genes but, rather, ern overtones which conceal the fact
arises from complicated interactions that Constantine’s religious experience
between genetic sequences and the was like nothing which would today
environment. Instead of bolstering be recognized as a conversion.” Con-
Commanding baritone Quinn Kelsey
the case for the promise of fMRI in stantine did have a major experience
brings his searing portrayal of the title
explaining thought, the genetic anal- with Christianity in the year 312. By
role to the Met for the fi rst time, starring
ogy tends to undermine it. some accounts, he attributed his vic-
in a bold new production of Verdi’s
Muhammad Ali Khalidi tory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
timeless tragedy by Bartlett Sher, with
Presidential Professor of Philosophy in part to a new symbol—the first two
1
an opulent Art Deco setting. Daniele
CUNY Graduate Center letters of Christ’s name in Greek—that
New York City was embossed on his army’s shields. Rustioni conducts a brilliant cast that
But the Emperor’s innovation was a also features soprano Rosa Feola and
THERE’S A PLACE FOR US new policy of tolerance for Christians, tenor Piotr Beczała.
which sharply contrasted with his pre-
Anthony Lane, in his review of Steven decessor Diocletian’s persecutions. Con-
metopera.org 212.362.6000
Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” seems stantine was eventually baptized, in
Tickets start at $25
determined to find fault (The Current 337 A.D., shortly before his death.
Cinema, December 20th). He may be David Jenkins
right that “the theatre remains the nat- Fort Collins, Colo.
ural home of the show,” because its
•
choreographed violence doesn’t trans-
late as convincingly on the screen. But Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
wouldn’t this be true of any film adap-
[email protected]. Letters may be edited
tation of a musical that features scenes
for length and clarity, and may be published in
of agony? Furthermore, Lane describes any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
the screenwriter Tony Kushner’s use of of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
PHOTO: PAOLA KUDACKI / MET OPERA
As ever, it’s advisable to confirm engagements in advance and to check the requirements for in-person attendance.
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Shikō Munakata (1903-75) brought Japan’s woodblock tradition into the modern age with
his spontaneous, Expressionist approach. “Shikō Munakata: A Way of Seeing,” on view at the
Japan Society
through March 20, includes the artist’s “Tōkaidō Series,” from 1964—“Yui: Con-
struction at Sea,” pictured above, is among its sixty-one images—for which he travelled along the
same coastal route that once inspired the Edo-period ukiyo-e masters Hiroshige and Hokusai.
1
drive to the record’s ecstatic idioglossia. “I am Ruo’s “Book of Mountains & Seas” and a special
MUSIC most comfortable when I’m in motion,” Ander- 1presentation of Silvana Estrada’s new album,
son wrote recently in PRESENCE, a zine pub- “Marchita,” follow later.—Oussama Zahr
lished by Liz Harris (of Grouper fame). “Once
Natu Camara
I get where I’m going, I’m quickly ready to keep
Around the turn of this century, moving.”—Jenn Pelly (Baby’s All Right; Jan. 10.)
AFRO-ROCK
Natu Camara began her music career in the ART
Ideal Black Girls, a Guinean quartet consid-
New York Philharmonic
ered West Africa’s first all-female R.&B. and
Liz Collins and Gabrielle Shelton
hip-hop group. Since relocating to Harlem, the The New York Philharmonic comes
CLASSICAL
Ivory Coast-born singer has flipped her musical to Carnegie Hall for the first time this season, These New York artists use contrasting me-
equation. Where before she was an African artist appearing under the leadership of the widely diums—Collins works with textiles, Shelton
performing music with an American edge, now esteemed Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki, with powder-coated steel—but they share a
she’s a New Yorker playing work steeped in Afro- whose tenure as the chief conductor of the Hel- bright palette and an interest in stairs, as both
pop. The songs on her solo album “Dimedi,” sinki Philharmonic concludes in 2023. (That utilitarian structures and geometric forms.
from 2018, are delivered in English, French, fact is likely not lost on the Los Angeles Phil- Their two-person show, at the Candice Madey
and her native Susu, and all are cast in a lush harmonic, where she serves as its principal gallery, reveals that they each also toy with the
bounce that reflects its gestation in a Mali studio. guest conductor—or on our home team, either.) gendered associations of their chosen materials.
Though constitutionally upbeat, Camara’s work An appealing program includes “An American In Collins’s square, throw-pillow-size compo-
is rooted in desolation: she came to her current Port of Call,” by Adolphus Hailstork, Sibelius’s sitions, stitched in silk, wool, cashmere, and
musical incarnation in the wake of her husband’s rousing Symphony No. 5, and John Adams’s mohair, tessellating patterns familiar from a
death from cancer, playing a guitar he had gifted alluring Saxophone Concerto, with Branford host of textile traditions are given a queer,
her as a wedding present. Through woe, she Marsalis as its agile, charismatic soloist.—Steve psychedelic twist. (The electric-pink diamonds
radiates.—Jay Ruttenberg (City Winery; Jan. 6.) Smith (Carnegie Hall; Jan. 6 at 8.) of “Gutter Femme” and the optically tricky
backdrop in “Rainbow Plaid” are tipoffs to the
L.G.B.T.Q. aesthetics.) Shelton presents hand-
Cityfox Odyssey Prototype Festival
some ziggurat floor sculptures, made out of her
The techno promoters Cityfox, One way to commemorate the tenth archetypal industrial material. One piece, titled
ELECTRONIC CLASSICAL
originally from Zurich but based in Brooklyn, annual Prototype Festival would have been “Carmen,” might seem to be an homage to
are among the city’s most reliable—their sound to revisit some of the innovative work that Donald Judd’s signature cadmium-red surface,
systems clear and detailed, their lighting and its producers, Beth Morrison Projects and but—like Shelton’s other works here, including
computer-generated visuals pin-sharp. The HERE Arts Center, have championed since “Marie” and “Ina,” in shades of plum and blush,
music can be predictable: roomy, fairly anon- 2013—David T. Little’s post-apocalyptic “Dog respectively—it is named for a Chanel lip color,
ymous tech house, packed with long builds and Days” or Ellen Reid’s beautifully broken “p r tempering macho allusions.—Johanna Fateman
portentous whooshes, tends to be the rule. But i s m,” to name just two. They have chosen the (candicemadey.com)
large rooms, full of celebrants, thrive on that (arguably) best route: focussing on the future,
kind of fare, and Cityfox Odyssey, a daylong with a slew of world and U.S. premières. “The
“Inspiring Walt Disney”
New Year’s event at Avant Gardner (Dec. 31 Hang,” a show created by the performance artist
at 9 P.M. to Jan. 1 at 11:59 P.M.), also features Taylor Mac and the composer Matt Ray, opens What explains the lasting wonderment of
some of the sharpest acts mining that more the festival with a queering of Socrates’ life French rococo, the theatrically frivolous,
traditional style—Âme, Sasha, and Solomun and influence. The next day sees the openings flauntingly costly mode in art and décor
make those whooshes signify something sub- of Emma O’Halloran’s “Trade,” in which two that flourished in mid-eighteenth-century
stantial.—Michaelangelo Matos working-class Dublin men meet for sex, and aristocratic circles before being squelched
Soul Inscribed’s musicalized history of mari- utterly by the Revolution of 1789? And why
juana, “Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville.” Huang did that bedazzling visual repertoire recur
Dee Dee Bridgewater
and Bill Charlap
EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
This occasional union of the veteran singer
JAZZ
Dee Dee Bridgewater and the pianist Bill Char-
lap is a duet of divergent temperaments that
The Philadelphia-based artist Tierra
somehow coalesce. Charlap is normally the
picture of composure; Bridgewater is passion Whack gained notoriety with her début
personified. What binds them together is a project, “Whack World,” a series of ex-
love of well-crafted songs and a fierce com-
perimental snippets, each around a min-
E mitment to authentic performance, no matter
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6H
A” (19BY O fmroomth Tero—nya Bnden Bnreitdt gtoe wSaantedry iSs theiws amrto, Csth raerclaepn’st and medium with three new EPs named
T SEON beneficiary, her heat tempered by his comport- for various genres—“Pop?,” “Rap?,” and
N AATI ment.—Steve Futterman (Birdland; Jan. 6-8.) “R. & B.?” Singles such as “Stand Up” and
OR
TIST “Body of Water” exhibit her command
CU
UL
ONSTRGHT: IL MFOLaK rJiimsa W Ahinted anedr sMoanri saan Adnd Jeirmson W travhelilteed oabf spuarsdtiiscth rea wp iothf Lpauldeattcersi st hanatd e tvhoek ep othpe-
CRI long, winding roads as improvisers to arrive at
UI: HT; “The Quickening,” their brilliantly inquisitive funk of André 3000, respectively. The
YG
A, “NI 2020 album. The drummer for the Australian music of each release emphasizes a cer-
TK
AS post-rock dreamers Dirty Three and a collabo- tain sound, but the question marks seem
KA
AL rator of many, including Cat Power, White is an
NO to imply some gamesmanship: Whack
MUCH action painter behind the kit; his gentle firework
Ō NI polyrhythms are a mesmerizing spectacle to be- has already made a career out of ignoring
KY
SHIH B hold. Anderson, one of the most distinctive gui- standard procedure, and on the gospel-in-
© P tar players of her generation, is just as expressive.
TE: GRA As someone who walked across the continental flected “Heaven” and the country-tinged
OSITO U.S., in the nineties, living an itinerant artist-ac- “Dolly” she challenges the usefulness
PPHO tivist existence, she brings a restless, openhearted of these genre tags.—Sheldon Pearce
OP
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 3 & 10, 2022 5
ephemeral. Kauffer spent his childhood in
AT THE GALLERIES
Evansville, Indiana, and later became a live-
wire cosmopolitan, based in England from 1915
to 1940. A vast chart spanning a wall of the show
is a name-drop constellation of associations:
Alfred Hitchcock, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley,
Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Man Ray,
and Sir Kenneth Clark. So why isn’t this “Un-
derground Modernist,” as the show is subtitled,
better known himself? One factor is his practi-
cally exotic integrity, public-spirited in service
to civic and political causes and holding that a
proper designer “must remain an artist.” Kauffer
worked mainly with small agencies, winning
commissions including the creation of some
hundred and twenty-five posters for the London
Underground. Never settling on a signature
style, he said that his criteria for posters were “at-
traction, interest, and stimulation,” deeming “no
1
means too arbitrary or too classical”—Apollonian
values.—P.S. (cooperhewitt.org)
DANCE
Ayodele Casel
The show “Chasing Magic,” which this ever-ra-
Lutz Bacher,
The American Conceptualist who died in 2019, at the
diant tap dancer filmed at the Joyce Theatre and
age of seventy-five, built a brilliant career from evasive, challenging released online, in April, was among the most
live-feeling of pandemic virtual events. Now it
gestures, including adopting her German, male-sounding pseudonym
returns to the Joyce, for live audiences. Some
in the early seventies. (The artist never publicly revealed her identity.)
of the musicians and guest stars are different
A new show, “The Lee Harvey Oswald Interview,” at Galerie Buchholz this time—there’s no Arturo O’Farrill or Ron-
aldK. Brown—but the singer-songwriter Crystal
through Feb. 5, highlights a project that she undertook, in 1976, in
Monee Hall returns, as do most of the dancers.
response to an invitation to participate in a book of conversations with
So, of course, does Casel herself, whose ability to
Bay Area artists. Rather than speak with an interlocutor about her art, spread warmth through her improvisations, cho-
reography, musicality, and stage presence is in-
Bacher posed questions to herself about President Kennedy’s assassin,
deed magical.—Brian Seibert (Jan. 4-9; joyce.org.)
producing an eighteen-page document that combines text with photostat
images. Various iterations of the piece, which continued through the
Chelsea Factory
late nineties, find Bacher assuming the guise of a restless conspiracist in
Chelsea Factory is a newly formed arts center,
order to illuminate the fugitive nature of subjectivity and photography’s
at 547 West Twenty-sixth Street, that provides
shaky claim to truth. Today, the project resonates in QAnon’s queasy financial support and low-cost rehearsal and
performance space to performing artists. The
wake. Its presentation at Buchholz celebrates the opening of the Betty
space itself is not new: for ten years, it housed
Center—Bacher’s extensive archive, which she designated a work of art
the contemporary-dance company Cedar Lake,
in 2010—situated near the gallery, on the Upper East Side. (To request which folded in 2015. Now under new man-
—Johanna Fateman agement, the center co-presents, alongside
an appointment, e-mail [email protected].)
the Joyce Theatre, the work of a select group
of up-and-coming dance artists. First up is
Luke Hickey (Jan. 11-12), a New York-based
in twentieth-century America as a species ingly abstracted from film to film, blended tap dancer and choreographer who has worked
of imitation art—kitsch, in a word, although smoothly into the insouciance of Disney’s with such luminaries as Michelle Dorrance and
managed with undoubtable genius—in the fairyland fantasies: escapist worlds, complete Ayodele Casel. His tap evening for three danc-
animated films of Walt Disney? This fun show in themselves. Though thoroughly secular, like ers, “A Little Old, a Little New,” is performed
Z
at the Met answers those questions by con- his nostalgic evocations of circa-1900 America, with an onstage jazz ensemble.—Marina Harss L
O
joining the pleasures of authentically froufrou the pastiche has something churchy about (chelseafactory.org) H
H
historical objects, mostly from the museum’s it.—Peter Schjeldahl (metmuseum.org) C
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collection, with their style’s application in E B
production drawings and video clips from Dis- Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith RI
E
E. McKnight Kauffer L
ney movies. The films include an early short, In May, at Abrons Arts Center’s outdoor am- A
G
from 1934, called “The China Shop,” in which This commercial poster designer, the subject phitheatre, this most mutually attuned of D
N
porcelain figurines have come to life and are of a startlingly spectacular show at the Cooper dance duos débuted “Gloria,” a grief-haunted, A
R
prettily dancing minuets; two classics of the Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, was cathartic feminist feat of endurance, which E
H
nineteen-fifties, “Cinderella” and “Sleeping a magus of boundless resourcefulness in the deconstructed images of female objectification C
A
Beauty”; and, forming the pièce de résistance, nineteen-twenties and thirties. (Kauffer died with help from the Laura Branigan song. In B
Z
an extravaganza in which atavistic pottery and in 1954.) With assistance from his second wife, December, the choreographer Tatyana Tenen- UT
L
candlesticks and clocks athletically celebrate Marion V. Dorn, he mined—and evangelized baum filmed Lieber and Smith for “gloria F
O
a romance for their owner in “Beauty and the for—adventurous aesthetics to change the street- rehearsal,” a thirty-five-minute video that E
T
Beast,” from 1991. Disney steered his studio to level look of cities, invigorate book-cover design, catches the two in between “Gloria” and what- A
T
S
exploit rococo’s gratuitous swank, emulating and inflect theatre sets and interior decoration. ever comes next, blurring the distinction be- E
Y
the feckless hedonism of the court of LouisXV His influence proved so infectious that it was tween rehearsal and performance. The work S
E
while chastely suppressing its frequent eroti- swallowed up by successive generations in a is available for free on Baryshnikov Arts Cen- RT
U
cism. The language of antic curlicues, increas- profession whose manufacture is inherently ter’s Web site, Jan. 10-24.—B.S. (bacnyc.org) O
C
6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 3 & 10, 2022
1
trifecta of achievements, has adapted the rected by Charles Randolph-Wright for
THE THEATRE eighteen-fifties work, composed a tuneful Roundabout Theatre Company), slowly
collection of rich and clever songs to accom- unravels an aging actress named Wiletta
pany the action, and directed this sweep- (LaChanze), who is reluctantly exposed
Caroline, or Change
ing, stylish, and very funny production. The to an acting approach that asks her to find
The English star Sharon D Clarke makes story involves a villainous banker, Gideon emotions to support the actions of her char-
her soul-shattering Broadway début in the Bloodgood (David Hess), who makes out acter. Her director, Al Manners (Michael
title role of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Te- just fine as the city’s economy crashes; his Zegen), fancies himself a social and artistic
sori’s 2004 musical, in a Roundabout Theatre rapacious daughter, Alida (the scene-stealing progressive. The play they’re rehearsing,
Company production directed by Michael Amanda Jane Cooper); and a feckless young slated for Broadway, is about small-town
Longhurst. It’s November, 1963; we’re in the gentleman, Mark Livingston (the wonder- Black folks who, because they want the right
Lake Charles, Louisiana, home of the Gell- ful tenor Ben Jacoby), whose fortunes are to vote, get threatened—and worse—by
mans, a Jewish family of stretched means, dashed, only to be reborn. Moore guides a gathering lynch mob. Al, who is white,
where Caroline Thibodeaux, the family’s her cast of twelve—accomplished comedians expresses dissatisfaction with Wiletta’s
Black maid, toils away. Caroline is angry: at and singers all—through a Dickensian series performance as a mother whose son is in
life, which has trapped her in other people’s of scenes by turns melodramatic, farcical, trouble, asking her to “justify” her char-
basements for twenty-two years while she and sentimental. The songs simultaneously acter’s decisions—not merely to act them
struggles to keep a roof over the heads of embrace and satirize the forms of the Amer- out with rote professionalism—and Wiletta
her own kids, and at herself, for failing to ican musical, hitting notes of whimsy, high begins asking questions that the script, and
rise above her regrets. Her bitterness doesn’t romance, and low vaudeville—all to the her director, just can’t answer. “Trouble in
deter the lonely eight-year-old Noah Gellman accompaniment of a sterling woodwinds- Mind” is pessimistic about the structures
(Jaden Myles Waldman, alternating with Ga- and-strings quintet, on a set that unfolds that underpin the entertainment industry,
briel Amoroso). Caroline is the center of his like a magic box.—Ken Marks (Irish Repertory but it is bullish about the possibilities of
universe, but their relationship is tested by Theatre; through Jan. 30.) earnest artistic pursuit. Even a schmuck
Noah’s new stepmother, Rose (Caissie Levy). like Al can read some Stanislavsky, bring it
Meanwhile, Caroline’s teen-age daughter (the clumsily into rehearsals, and, unwittingly,
Trouble in Mind
radiant Samantha Williams) is developing a spark the beginnings of a revolution.—Vin-
political consciousness that Caroline fears This 1955 play by Alice Childress, mak- son Cunningham (12/6/21) (American Airlines
will lead to disappointment, or worse. Clarke ing its much belated Broadway début (di- Theatre; through Jan. 9.)
is as powerful a performer as you’re likely to
see, and this production should confirm the
show as a contemporary classic.—Alexandra
THEATRICAL CONCERT
Schwartz (Reviewed in our issue of 11/8/21.)
(Studio 54; through Jan. 9.)
Company
Stephen Sondheim’s gimlet ode to the eter-
nal fear of shrivelling up and dying alone—
that is, of being thirty-five and single—from
1970, based on a series of one-act plays by
George Furth (who wrote the book), gets
a bristling, buoyant revival, directed by
Marianne Elliott. Bobby, the musical’s
avowed bachelor, has become Bobbie (Ka-
trina Lenk), a singleton in present-day New
York, who is pursued not by a trio of mar-
riage-hungry gals but by three eligible gents
who think she’s crazy not to settle down.
Her friends, all of them long ago partnered,
heartily agree. Bobbie, who is seen by her
cohort as a kind of willful kid, visits with
her various friends and lovers, and what she
observes does not tempt her matrimonial
appetite. Thanks to the gender switch, when
Joanne (Patti LuPone), Bobbie’s salty, seen-
it-all older friend, raises her vodka Stinger
to “the girls who just watch,” in the song
“The Ladies Who Lunch,” she’s no longer
talking only to herself but to Bobbie, too;
LuPone has concocted a signature, bouncy John Cameron Mitchell will soon play Joe Exotic in a Peacock mini-
version of Joanne’s ferocious number. If series derived from the Netflix docu-hit “Tiger King.” But he’ll forever
there’s a weak link here, it’s Lenk, who has
be known for his alter ego, Hedwig, the saucy Teutonic punk goddess
the sharp comic timing and the ironic emo-
tional armor required for the role but seems with mangled genitalia and a bulging corn-colored wig. Mitchell based
to push her voice, straining where she should the character on a German sex worker who babysat for his family in
soar.—A.S. (12/20/21) (Bernard B. Jacobs
Kansas, and he began appearing in her alt-glam guise in rock clubs in
O Theatre; open run.)
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E the nineties. “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” with songs by Stephen
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DI Trask that meld the droll and the mystical, premièred Off Broadway in
O The Streets of New York
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R 1998 and became a cult film, directed by and starring Mitchell, in 2001.
A The Irish Repertory Company revives its
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RI bright, winking, mustache-twirling musical By the time the show got to Broadway, in 2014, it had a rabid fan base
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B adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s play. Bou- calling itself the Hedheads. Mitchell and Trask revive their creation at
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O cicault was a gallivanting Irishman who, in “Return to the Origin of Love,”
ATI the nineteenth century, achieved great suc- the Town Hall, Dec. 29-31, in a holiday
TR cess on both the London and the New York spectacular in the acid, anarchic spirit of Hedwig, featuring downtown’s
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LU stage. Charlotte Moore, in an impressive zany Amber Martin.—Michael Schulman
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fate. Even his swordplay has a comic agility; asides into the camera, competing voice-over
MOVIES talk about a rapier wit.—Anthony Lane (In narrations, and subjective distortions of image
theatrical release.) and sound, all to antic effect. His blend of
musical fantasy and realistic action reaches an
Cyrano
exhilarating peak in scenes featuring the dance
Designing Woman
Joe Wright’s new film is the latest attempt to director Jack Cole as a choreographic genius
drag the fable of Cyrano de Bergerac onto the The director Vincente Minnelli infuses the who confronts homophobic stereotypes. Only
big screen—the noblest effort, so far, being urbane romance of two dashing New York- some unsympathetic jokes about a punch-
Fred Schepisi’s light-footed “Roxanne” (1987), ers—Mike Hagen (Gregory Peck), a sports- drunk ex-fighter (Mickey Shaughnessy) fall
with Steve Martin. In this new version, shot writer, and Marilla Brown (Lauren Bacall), a flat. Released in 1957.—Richard Brody (Stream-
largely in Sicily and swagged with period de- fashion designer—with freewheeling comic ing on Amazon, iTunes, and other services.)
tails, what distinguishes Cyrano (Peter Dink- verve. They meet-cute in California and cap
lage) is not the length of his nose but his lack off their whirlwind affair with a snap marriage.
The Hours and Times
of height. His heartbreaking mission remains Back in Manhattan, they have trouble meshing
the same: to woo the lady he loves, Roxanne their ways of life—Mike’s hardboiled friends In his first feature, from 1991, Christopher
(Haley Bennett), not for his own sake but on mix poorly with Marilla’s refined set—and Münch boldly dramatizes and analyzes the
behalf of a dashing, though tongue-tied, suitor things get worse when Mike’s investigation of quasi-universal allure of the Beatles. Like a
named Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.). The a corrupt boxing promoter puts him in danger scientist, he considers the phenomenon in
movie is adapted from a stage musical, and and Marilla’s attempt at costume design brings isolation, fictionalizing the four-day jaunt
it’s a shock, not always pleasant, when the the theatre crowd into their home. There’s real to Barcelona, in 1963, taken by John Len-
characters start to sing; far from advancing chemistry between Bacall and Peck, which non (played by Ian Hart) and Brian Epstein
the action, the songs bring it juddering to a Minnelli spotlights in carefully observed inti- (David Angus), the band’s manager. The story
halt. Yet Dinklage saves the day, being worldly, macies and brusque banter alike. He pries the that unfolds is intimate, but its results are
wry, and mournfully amused at the cruelties of story open with playful artifice, using direct vast, and Münch insightfully and ingeniously
reveals both the public and the historic em-
anations of the film’s essentially private
moments. Hart’s incarnation of John is un-
WHAT TO STREAM
canny; he endows the musician with playful,
free-spirited wit, which contrasts with Brian’s
fine manners and painful wisdom. (The real-
life Epstein was gay, and Münch emphasizes
that an erotic current passed between the
two men.) For that matter, John’s personal
style—his physical and emotional freedom,
his way of talking, walking, dancing—comes
off as inseparable from his art. The film offers
intellectual archeology, rediscovering states
of mind and mood that shook the world;
Münch’s calm, contemplative, and quietly
astonished direction vibrates with the epochal
excitement of the time.—R.B. (Streaming on
the Criterion Channel.)
The Matrix Resurrections
The fourth installment of the “Matrix” series
is most closely modelled not on the specula-
tive first part of the original trilogy nor on
the exuberant second but on the space-op-
eratic third, which ends with Neo (Keanu
Reeves) dead. In the new film—directed by
Lana Wachowski, who wrote the script with
David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon—the
character lives on, in his former identity of
Thomas Anderson. He’s a bored corporate
Mysterious connections of political history and family drama are unfolded
video-game designer who’s ordered to pro-
“Intimate Stranger,”
by the filmmaker Alan Berliner in his 1991 personal duce a sequel to his famous Matrix series of
documentary (streaming on the Criterion Channel starting Jan. 1). It tells games. But a chance encounter with a woman
named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) persuades
the story of his maternal grandfather, Joseph Cassuto, a Jewish cotton
him that his beloved Trinity (played by Moss
dealer in Alexandria, Egypt, who worked with Japanese companies and in the trilogy) is also still alive. With the help
was married to an American woman. The family was separated by the of a new-generation crew led by Bugs (Jes-
sica Henwick) and Seq (Toby Onwumere),
Second World War and then reunited in Brooklyn; Cassuto, however,
he plans to find her—threatening the hard-
devoted himself to the postwar redevelopment of Japan—a commit- won peace of the new underground city of
ment, involving frequent travel, that was both a business matter yielding Io and sparking conflict with its ruler, Niobe N
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(Jada Pinkett Smith). Dialogue dominates:
scant income and a personal passion to which he sacrificed his family’s TI
effortful explanations of original characters’ C
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well-being. Cassuto died in 1974; to make the film, Berliner delved into reincarnation by different actors mix with LL
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his late grandfather’s chaotic hoard of correspondence, photographs, sluggish world-building and reflexive riffs on C
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fiction, reality, and nostalgia. What’s more, O
home movies, and writings, and he interviewed family members and t1he action is routine; the sense of wonder is ERI
Cassuto’s professional acquaintances. What he found were contrasting missing.—R.B. (Playing in theatres and stream- RIT
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identities: an “ambassador without portfolio” who was esteemed overseas ing on HBO Max.) E
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and a “nobody” who left bitter memories at home. Sketching Cassuto’s Y
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lonely efforts to promote both world peace and his name, Berliner also T
For more reviews, visit R
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traces the fine line between a visionary and a crank.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town O
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