THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2019 13
ILLUSTRATION BY ELENI KALORKOTI
Few things—the “Rachel” haircut, O. J.
Simpson trying on a glove—evoke the
nineties as vividly as “Jagged Little
Pill,” Alanis Morissette’s smash-hit
album from 1995. In songs that burst
with spurned rage (“You Oughta
Know”), assured ambivalence (“Hand
in My Pocket”), and the disappoint-
ment of having it rain on your wed-
ding day (“Ironic”), Morissette gave an
angsty, intelligent voice to the Gen X
woman. A new Broadway musical
takes its title and its songs from the
album (plus others by Morissette)
to tell the story of a suburban family
navigating such hot-button issues as
opioid addiction and gender identity.
Diane Paulus directs the production
(in previews, at the Broadhurst), with a
book by the screenwriter Diablo Cody
(“Juno”).—Michael Schulman
ON BROADWAY
1
THE THEATRE
Big Apple Circus
Lincoln Center
Since the departure, two years ago, of the
beloved Grandma clown (Barry Lubin, who
resigned following accusations of sexual mis-
conduct), the Big Apple Circus, which pitched
its first tent in 1977, has been casting about
for a replacement. This year, the star clown is
Pidge (Amy Gordon), a graceful lady in a pur-
ple pigeon suit and roller skates who gets “no
respect.” That’s not surprising, considering the
number of poop jokes she makes, but there’s
still a good amount of dazzle here, headed
up by the commanding ringmaster Storm
Marrero. Among the truly wonder-inducing
acts—the hand-balancing duo of Dupla Mão
na Roda, the daredevil Jayson Dominguez
on the Wheel of Death, the Lopez Troupe of
tightrope walkers (and bicycle riders), the ac-
robatic equestrian marvel Caleb Carinci—the
clear favorites are the smallest performers:
the Savitsky Cats. These Persian puffballs
perform tricks never before deigned by a cat,
with coolheaded panache, and the crowd goes
wild.—Shauna Lyon (Through Feb. 2.)
Dr. Ride’s American Beach House
Greenwich House Theatre
On the surface, not much happens on the
St.Louis tar beach where Liza Birkenmeier’s
play takes place. Matilda (Erin Markey) and
Harriet (Kristen Sieh) drink beer and shoot
the breeze. It is June, 1983, and Sally Ride,
who is launching into space the next day, is on
their minds. Harriet and Matilda, who have
been close friends since high school, so far
have not shown the decisive gumption of their
namesakes from beloved children’s books. Both
once aspired to be writers, and now they wait
tables—they are not unhappy, but they are not
happy, either. Enter Meg (Marga Gomez), an
amiable butch lesbian whose gentle, catalytic
bluntness forces Harriet and Matilda to face
their choices. For this Ars Nova production,
the director Katie Brook and her wonderful
cast gently tease out the unsaid as Harriet and
Matilda stumble through their lives.—Elisabeth
Vincentelli (Through Nov. 23. )
Fear
Lucille Lortel
During a search for a missing girl in the woods
of New Jersey, an overeager plumber (Enrico
Colantoni) ties up and interrogates a troubled
teen-ager (Alexander Garfin) in an abandoned
toolshed; they’re soon joined by a Princeton
literature professor (Obi Abili) who’s heard
the boy’s shouts for help. The men argue over
whether the teen-ager is a victim or a villain in
an urgent exchange that improbably digresses
into a backstory-packed moral, political, and
cultural debate along formulaic lines. (The
professor is a relativist liberal; the plumber
is a Manichaean conservative.) In the torrent
of dialogue, they often seem to forget about
the teen-ager, which is probably meant to
be symbolic. Directed by Tea Alagić, Matt
Williams’s play starts off contrived, becomes
less convincing as it goes, and ends in a flurry
of cop-out ambiguities.—Rollo Romig (Through
Dec. 8.)
The Michaels
Public
Like Richard Nelson’s previous play cycles,
“The Michaels” is set in the present—on
October 27, 2019, to be exact—in a house in
Rhinebeck, New York, and if you can see it
you should. Rose Michael (Brenda Wehle),
a modern-dance choreographer who is dying
of ovarian cancer, lives with Kate (Maryann
Plunkett), a retired high-school teacher who
once taught Rose’s daughter, Lucy (Char-
lotte Bydwell); Lucy’s sweet-natured father,
David (Jay O. Sanders), is now married to
the spiky Sally (Rita Wolf). Nelson builds
characters who are rich in spirit and soul and
sends them spinning toward and away from
one another. All the actors are wonderful,
particularly Wehle and the Nelson regulars
Sanders and Plunkett. When Lucy, a cho-
reographer herself, performs one of Rose’s
dances, Rose, in the grand tradition of ego-
maniacal, domineering artists, cuts her down.
How new it still is, though, for this dynamic to
be depicted with powerful mothers and their
striving daughters, rather than with fathers
and sons.—Alexandra Schwartz (Reviewed in
our issue of 11/11/19.) (Through Dec. 1.)
One Discordant Violin
59E
Anthony Black performs and co-directs, with
Ann-Marie Kerr, his own adaptation of an
early short story by the novelist Yann Martel,
about an earnest young Canadian who, on a
visit to Washington, D.C., stumbles upon the
world première, in a condemned old theatre,
of an ingenious concerto composed by a Viet-
nam vet who works as a janitor in a bank. The
lighting, by Nick Bottomley and Anna Shep-
ard, makes dreamy use of color and shadow,
which nicely evokes the gentle, late-night
surreality of Martel’s story, and the violinist
Jacques Mindreau delivers a passionate perfor-
mance of his effective original score (which he
composed with Aaron Collier). Still, Martel’s
story is a slight, sometimes wincingly callow
piece of juvenilia, and Black’s version doesn’t
much improve it.—R.R. (Through Nov. 24.)
displayed on plinths, which are her sculptural
début. Brightly colored grooves outline their
stylized imagery, and kinetic cutouts (of lem-
ons, mostly) disrupt their colorful planes.
These curious works sometimes have a toylike,
or even utilitarian, presence; the handsome
“Steam and Donut Shadow” is capped by a bio-
morphic swoop of blue vapor that could double
as a dish-towel hook.—J.F. (Through Dec. 8.)
Alexandra Noel
Bodega
DOWNTOWN The only unifying principle in this
Los Angeles artist’s paintings is size: they’re
all small, some a mere three by four inches.
There is otherwise no easily discernible
through line of subject matter or style. “XX”
appears to depict, with sombre fairy-tale re-
alism, a beleaguered princess, thrown to the
ground; “Eep” features a cloudy sky, but Noel
disrupts painterly illusion with a spiral of red
finger-paint dots. Several works suggest closely
cropped views of photographs (including one
of a newborn, wearing a heart monitor); in
others, the artist shows her surrealist side in
carefully modelled alien structures and blobs.
But it’s Noel’s humble assemblages, made of
pastel-hued wooden blocks and dowels, that
seem the oddest, if not the wildest, of the
wild cards on view in this vexing, captivating
show.—J.F. (Through Dec. 15.)
