October/November recommendations
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October/November recommendations
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Welcome, new subscribers! We’ve got a New York focus today, with some previews for Oregonians.
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🗽NYC: COST OF LIVING by Martyna Majok, directed by Jo Bonney
presented by Manhattan Theatre Club
Hailed by The New York Times as “gripping, immensely haunting and exquisitely attuned,” this insightful, intriguing work is about the forces that bring people together, the complexity of caring and being cared for, and the ways we all need each other in this world.
Among the many different conversations that I’m grateful the pandemic opened up is the one about the lack of care infrastructure in the US. (Quick shoutout to Anne Helen Petersen’s writing, which is cogent and insightful and the place that I’ve learned a lot of the language to talk about what’s missing and what we could dream of.) I’ve been a Martyna Majok fan ever since I saw SANCTUARY CITY last year, and I’m very eager for her take on care, class, and disability. Her writing marries the tragic, the vulnerable, and the absurd, and she isn’t afraid to weave humor throughout her work. I’m here for it.
🚶🏽 watch in person at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre: 261 West 47th Street
💰 from $59. A limited number of $35 rush tickets for each performance are available the day of the show at TodayTix.com. Rush tickets are subject to availability and blackout. Student rush tickets are available at the box office on the day of the show when the box office opens. Tickets are $30 (including all fees), payable by cash or credit card, and are available to students with an ID from a degree or diploma granting institution. Tickets are subject to availability and are limited to two per valid ID. Note that anyone aged 35 or under may prefer to purchase their tickets through the 30 Under 35 program instead.
❗️📆 through November 6
♿️ accessibility information here
😷 masks required
🗽NYC: TOPDOG/UNDERDOG by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Kenny Leon
at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway
Suzan-Lori Parks’ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, a darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, tells the story of two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, names given to them as a joke by their father. Haunted by the past and their obsession with the street con game three-card monte the brothers come to learn the true nature of their history.
It’s high time for a major revival of this play, which at its core is about how racism exposes the falseness of America’s promises. This production does such a smart job of it. Any two-hander
is really about the acting: the relationship between the characters and the tug of war between them onstage. Director Kenny Leon centers two excellent actors and focuses on the scenework, avoiding the trap of flashy Broadway touches. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins are giving a masterclass in acting—both are fully present in every second of the play and crackling with energy razor-focused on their stage partner. It’s not often that a Broadway audience is so in the play that they gasp and jump and laugh throughout. I could feel the tension in every taut second of the play, as well as the exhale when the lights went down at the end. It was glorious.🚶🏽watch in person at the John Golden Theatre: 252 W 45th St.
💰 tickets from $69. Rush tickets available at the box office on the day of the performance for $35; limited to 2 tickets per customer. Entries for Topdog/Underdog lottery tickets start at 12:00am, one day before the performance, and end the same day at 3:00pm. Winners are drawn at 9:00am and 3:00pm. Winners may buy up to two tickets at $40 each.
📆 through January 15, 2023
⛔️ neither masks nor vaccines required
🗽NYC: WHERE WE BELONG by Madeline Sayet, directed by Mei Ann Teo
presented by The Public Theatre
In 2015, Mohegan theatre-maker Madeline Sayet moved to England to pursue a PhD in Shakespeare, grappling with the question of what it means to remain or leave, as the Brexit vote threatens to further disengage the UK from the wider world. Moving between nations that have failed to reckon with their ongoing roles in colonialism, she finds comfort in the journeys of her Native ancestors who had to cross the ocean in the 1700s to help her people. In this intimate and exhilarating solo piece directed by Mei Ann Teo, Sayet asks us what it means to belong in an increasingly globalized world.
I’ve heard wonderful things about this production. It’s been touring the US for six months, and in a brilliant example of an artist leading institutions to put their money where their mouths are, “the show has an accountability rider that travels with it to make sure that the theaters [who present the piece] are building relationships with the Native nations and communities whose lands they occupy.”
Solo autobiographical performance is a tricky genre and I am very excited to see what, by all accounts, is a stellar example of it.🌲 For any Oregonians who like to plan ahead, the show will come to Portland Center Stage in Oregon February 25 - March 26, 2023 and Oregon Shakespeare Festival August 26 - October 14, 2023!
🚶🏽 watch in person at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre: 261 West 47th Street
💰 tickets from $60 + fees. Student and rush tickets also available. **To celebrate and honor members of the Indigenous and Native community, complimentary tickets for the entire run of the production are available to those who identity as part of the community. Use code WWBINVITE in the promo code box above the calendar to access these free tickets.
📆 October 28 - November 27
🧏🏽 Audio Description performance November 13, 2PM; Open Caption performance November 19, 2PM
😷 masks required for certain performances, as marked on website
p.s.
I have to add one more plug for Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: absolutely essential reading to challenge the false colonialist histories that most of us learn in school, if we learn about Indigenous peoples at all.
A play with two actors.