8 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY CLAIRE MERCHLINSKY
The filmmaker Ry Russo-Young, who has explored the coming-of-age
experiences of young women in films such as “Before I Fall” and “The
Sun Is Also a Star,” now turns her camera on her own life for the stunning
three-part HBO documentary series “Nuclear Family.” She details her
very public and embattled childhood years, in the early eighties, when
her mothers—Sandy Russo and Robin Young, a lesbian couple—had to
fight to remain her legal parents. Russo and Young enlisted two friends
of friends as sperm donors for their two daughters, but never planned for
these men to enter their lives as anything more than kindly acquaintances.
However, once Russo-Young’s father, Tom Steel, began spending time
with the family, he formed a bond with Russo-Young and sued for joint
custody. The landmark case became a hotbed of public debate: Should
sperm donors have any biological right to their children? What are the
parental rights of gay couples? Russo-Young was caught in the middle of
it all, and now she processes both the pain and the joy of her complicated
past through a camera lens. The documentary is enraging, engrossing, and
ultimately healing. Russo-Young stands with her mothers while grappling
with her lingering connection to Steel, who died of AIDS, exhibiting fierce
love without ever passing judgment. It is a feat.—Rachel SymeONTELEVISION
a specialty of the ballet world—the dancing
will be followed by streamers, flowers, and
lots of tears.—Marina Harss (nycballet.com;
through Oct. 17.)
Fall for Dance
City Center’s popular sampler is back in
person, Oct. 13-24. Tickets are still fifteen
dollars, and there’s still a smorgasbord of
five programs, but each one is a little shorter,
without an intermission. Though many of the
premières (including those by Justin Peck,
Ayodele Casel, and Lar Lubovitch) are clus-
tered in the last two programs, the opener,
running Oct. 13-14, features newly recon-
structed late-sixties television dances that
Bob Fosse made with Gwen Verdon. Slipping
into Verdon’s roles is the bold New York City
Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin; you might
notice what Beyoncé borrowed for her “Single
Ladies” video. Other likely Fall for Dance
highlights include works by Kyle Abraham,
Ephrat Asherie, and Lil Buck.—Brian Seibert
(nycitycenter.org/pdps/FallforDance)Richard Move and MoveOpolis!
Conceived, directed, and choreographed by
Richard Move, “Herstory of the Universe@
Governors Island” takes place, naturally, on
Governors Island, on Oct. 16. Each of its
six sections takes advantage of a different
site: the brick buildings and pathways of
Nolan Park, the nooks of Hammock Grove,
the wind-exposed contours and city views
of the Hills. Dramatically costumed cast
members—Megumi Eda, PeiJu Chien-Pott,
and Natasha M. Diamond-Walker, among
others—respond to the environment, even
as they embody goddesses and angels.—B.S.
(govisland.org)“SW!NG OUT”
Best known as a bright young talent in con-
temporary tap dance, Caleb Teicher is also a
force in bringing present-day swing dance
to the stage. The form, born in the nine-
teen-twenties and thirties, is often approached
as period-costume historical, but this show, at
the Joyce Theatre, through Oct. 17, treats the
Lindy Hop as alive. The creators and perform-
ers, called the Braintrust—which, in addition
to Teicher, includes Nathan Bugh, Evita Arce,
Macy Sullivan, and the extraordinary LaTa-
sha Barnes—are highly knowledgeable about
tradition yet open to change, most visibly
in a flexibility around gender roles. In con-
versation with live music by the Eyal Vilner
Big Band, they improvise the dance into our
time.—B.S. (joyce.org)1
THETHEATRESanctuary City
In this play by Martyna Majok—a New York
Theatre Workshop production at the Lucille
Lortel—B (Jasai Chase-Owens) is an undoc-
umented immigrant who was brought to the
United States as a child by his mother, who
now, just as her son is about to finish high
school, wants to return home and leave him in a
hostile country. His best friend is G (Sharlene
Cruz), who, thankfully, becomes naturalized
during the course of the play but is always
nursing a bruise because of violence at home.
The pair shuffle through short, impressionistic
scenes, showing how intricately their griefs and
worries grow. The constant temporal shifts re-
quire deft choreography and sharp transitions,
amply provided by the director, Rebecca Freck-
nall. When we see political particulars prying
the friends apart—G has earned a scholarship
to a school in Massachusetts; B, in spite of his
good grades and hard work, can’t go to college
because of his status—we experience it as per-
sonally excruciating. The tight skin around
the play holds because of Majok’s insistence
on the primacy of friendship—complete with
exacting specifics—and Cruz’s galvanizing
ability to enact it in all its complexity.—Vinson
Cunningham (Reviewed in our issue of 10/11/21.)
(nytw.org; through Oct. 17.)What to Send Up When It
Goes Down
Aleshea Harris began writing this play in
2014, in response to George Zimmerman’s
acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin.
She has staged it several times, as a way of
memorializing the deaths of Black people at
the hands of the police and other awful actors.
Directed by Whitney White, the players in
this Playwrights Horizons production—in-
cluding Rachel Christopher, Ugo Chukwu,
Denise Manning, JavonQ. Minter, and Beau
Thom—are electric, improbably loose and
fun given the nearly religious seriousness
of their task. The sketches are punctuated
by dance numbers, often the kind of step-
ping made famous by Black fraternities and
sororities, that have the antic, furious energy
of classic “Looney Tunes” gags and the tart
satire of the nineties sketch-comedy show “In
Living Color.” The play isn’t just a memorial