‘Big Feelings’
A little infantilizing goes a long way in Ryan Drake’s immersive play, in which the audience puts its adult concerns away to become a class of first graders. After we receive our name tags, we chat with our neighbors, practice counting by twos, draw a moment when we felt overwhelmed by our circumstances and sound out tricky words. The director Sammy Zeisel ensures that we’re a little nervous — I did not want to screw up counting — while also learning the classroom rules as we go. This handily distracts us from the travails of our teacher, Ms. Joy (Julia Greer), who starts to act increasingly overwhelmed herself.
The show is best when it’s fruit snacks and veiled hints; the more we learn about Ms. Joy’s problems, the less convincing they sound. But the extraordinary setting, meticulously created by the scenic designer Silin Chen and the illustrator Gaby FeBland, is believable enough that it de-ages something deep in your limbic system. Greer does a lovely job seesawing at the edge of sanity, while still keeping her “young” charges’ welfare at heart. OK, Ms. Joy has made some oopsies. But she still gets the gold star. HELEN SHAW
Through July 23 at the Cell Gallery Space, Manhattan.
‘Goodbye Horses: An Unauthorized Retelling of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs”’
The scene in which the F.B.I. agent Clarice Starling recounts a traumatic event from her childhood to the suave serial killer Hannibal Lecter isn’t the scariest in “The Silence of the Lambs,” but it might be the most unsettling one. It is also the emotional highlight of this new channeling of that 1991 film, in which Michael Kinnan plays all the parts — as he did in “Never Let Go” (2021), his solo re-enactment of “Titanic.” His Starling is a little more girlish, a little more naïve than Jodie Foster’s, while his Lecter is both homage to Anthony Hopkins’s interpretation and subtly distinct. As Kinnan toggles between the two, we understand on a primal level how the characters reflect, and distort, each other.
Directed with Tom DeTrinis, the production is relatively simple, with no costume changes and just a few props (but oh yes, there is a hand truck, and a basket). The minimalism only sharpens the focus: The audience at the performance I attended laughed at the film’s famous markers at first, but the merriment gradually subsided as the story took hold. Kinnan is faithful to the script while being fully aware of its more dubious themes. The way he resolves that apparent contradiction is nothing less than artistic sleight-of-hand. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
Through July 25 at the Brick, Brooklyn.
‘Othello’
If you’re looking for free outdoor Shakespeare this summer, the Classical Theater of Harlem’s crowd-pleasing, action-packed, modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s tragedy is an absolute humdinger. Narratively, this Uptown Shakespeare in the Park staging is as clear as Venetian glass, thanks to the director Carl Cofield’s addition of an introductory scene, in which the slithery Iago (Nick Westrate) breaks bad when his general Othello (James Udom) passes him over for promotion. Military protocol is both the battlefield and the primary weapon here: Cofield focuses on the needling interactions between the so-called Moor of Venice and the white men who resent his achievements; we register each shock on Udom’s face as their maddening poison sneaks through.
There are several standouts in the production, including Hiram Delgado as a hilariously dim Roderigo, who often seems flummoxed by the brothers Christopher and Justin Swader’s mazelike set. My favorite performers, though, are the superb Udom, playing Othello, and Isabel Arraiza, playing Othello’s doomed wife Desdemona. They imagine the central couple as soul mates who think they’ve vanquished their world’s racism and misogyny by turning toward each other. The pair’s initial solidarity makes the show’s climactic scene unspeakably grim — despite their love and effort, they still find those old familiar demons waiting in their bed. SHAW
Through July 26 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan.
‘Dukes’
Jane Wickline and Liva Pierce play versions of themselves as symbiotic roommates frustrated by everything from porn to their jobs to, eventually, each other in this surreally funny new musical comedy (“Dukes” is both the title of the show and the name of the act). We follow the duo through a series of comically fraught events that include a double date gone horribly wrong, hours at dead-end jobs and a loaded encounter with their hot neighbor. It all worsens until the friends’ relationship is put to the test.
The show, which is directed by Henry Hornbuckle and Mabel Lewis, integrates several numbers that shoehorn wordy, narrative-heavy lyrics, often performed in an almost artless singsong manner, into deceptively catchy melodies. The results teeter between awkward and strangely entrancing — the effect will be familiar to “Saturday Night Live” viewers, where Wickline has been contributing similar material to Weekend Update. But mostly those songs are funny, as when Pierce and Wickline muse about saving women (but only the beautiful ones) from fires, or being so frustrated with their phones that they throw them from a bridge into the Hudson. That brief moment of revolt is immediately followed by the startled line “I cannot find my house,” bristling with impotent exasperation. VINCENTELLI
Through Aug. 2, SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan.
‘What a World! What a World!’
Eric Marlin’s cryptic play about camp and its discontents isn’t exactly — or solely — a play. The director Ilana Khanin treats Marlin’s disorienting and archly funny text as if it were a avant-garde choreographic score: For the first section of the 65-minute show, it’s like a dance of the minimalist Judson Church variety; then it becomes a drag re-enactment, as if a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” shadow cast had decided to act out “Casablanca” instead.
Only two actors portray a number of couples — I couldn’t tell you how many — who all share an obsession with a (fake) Hollywood classic called “The Pearl of My Oyster.” (Based on a description delivered via title cards, it’s essentially “Now, Voyager” crossed with “All That Heaven Allows.”) As Annie Hoeg and Queen-Tiye Akamefula trade text and sometimes identities, they strike poses around the Tank’s tiny theater — sinking into deep lunges, hiding in a dark corner, unrolling a stormy backdrop that only loosely relates to the film. All the time they’re discussing queer aesthetics, particularly the influence Golden Age melodrama has over performances of gender. Is it empowering or degrading to love those old films? “This isn’t love, this is erotics,” says one of the fans. “Keep up.” SHAW
Through Aug. 2 at the Tank, Manhattan.
‘Woyzeck’
Georg Büchner’s “Woyzeck” is an unlikely time machine to the East Village of the mid-1990s, but here we are — at least in this new production from the Adult Film company. The show takes place in a small converted sweater factory in Queens, and the venue’s renovation is as unfinished as the play, which the German dramatist didn’t complete before dying in 1837. A setting in disrepair is just right for the expressionist tale of the title soldier (Ryan Czerwonko), whose descent into psychosis and murder feels like one of the first instances of a dramatic portrayal of acute post-traumatic stress disorder. (The grunge vibe is compounded by a duo banging out songs by the likes of Hole and Bikini Kill.)
The beginning of Seth Bockley’s staging sets the tone, with Marie (Madeline Bernhard) on her back, giving birth to an accordion. It’s a simple but very effective idea, and the show is full of those. They don’t add up to a traditionally coherent narrative, but who cares when the visual flair and offbeat line readings keep one’s attention fully engaged? Just when you start worrying that the homogenization of taste is killing New York theater, a show like this comes around. VINCENTELLI
Through Aug. 15 at Modern Sweater, Queens.
‘Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody’
Apparently there are no fewer than four “Heated Rivalry” spoofs headed to the Edinburgh Fringe later this summer, one of which is a touring version of Dylan MarcAurele’s incredibly tuneful, unabashedly raunchy, lyrically unhinged “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody.” New York got the jump on Edinburgh by several months, since MarcAurele’s version arrived hard on the heels of the runaway hockey erotica hit back in May. Arriving first is not always a guarantee of quality, of course, but MarcAurele and the director Alan Kliffer poured their significant talents into this production, which is cunningly low-budget and puppet-infested, though it also happens to contain genuinely great songs.
Jimin Moon soars as the sweetly oblivious Shane Hollander; Jay Armstrong Johnson makes goal after goal as the sly Ilya Rozanov. They and a chorus of TV-obsessed moms who just want to watch these two beautiful men smash into each other mock the show as only those who really love it could. Audiences will also need to be serious fans, or else the many jokes about smoothies might fall on dry soil. But MarcAurele’s musical catches the romance of the original while also (somehow) making it dirtier — if I actually knew what a hat trick was, this show would be one. SHAW
Through Nov. 1 at the Culture Club, Manhattan.
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