8 THENEWYORKER,M AY 9, 2022
ILLUSTRATION BY JOSIE NORTON
Sarah Silverman seems to have a homing instinct for uncomfortable sub-
jects—racial slurs, bodily functions, Grandma’s death—which she takes
up with the glee of a nice Jewish girl gone bad. How did she get that way?
Answers lie in her 2010 memoir, “The Bedwetter” (subtitle: “Stories of
Courage, Redemption, and Pee”), which touched on her childhood problem
with nighttime urination. “At least with liver cancer,” she wrote, “people
gather at your bedside instead of run from it.” But she learned to embrace
the things that make us squirm, and a button-pusher was born. The book
is now an Off Broadway musical (in previews, opening on May 23, at the
Atlantic Theatre Company), starring Zoe Glick as the ten-year-old Sarah.
Silverman co-wrote the script with Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”) and the
lyrics with Adam Schlesinger, of Fountains of Wayne, who also composed
the music. The show arrives after a two-year delay—tragically, without
Schlesinger, who died of COVID early in the pandemic.—Michael SchulmanOFFBROADWAY
emotion unwallowed in. The flip side of so much
pain is hope: that faith in art can set the soul
free.—Alexandra Schwartz (Lyceum; open run.)Two by Synge
John Millington Synge wrote the short plays
“The Tinker’s Wedding” and “In the Shadow
of the Glen” in the first decade of the twentieth
century. Both set in the countryside of County
Wicklow, they are based on stories that Synge
heard while living among Ireland’s poorest,
proudest, and feistiest communities. Boisterous
and impious (most of the characters are surpris-
ingly independent of the Catholic Church), there
is a rough-hewn, lyrical, distinctly Irish poetry in
the dialogue. “The Tinker’s Wedding” climaxes
with a broad, unexpected bit of stage business
that is just as funny as it is angry; “Shadow of
the Glen” has some macabre surprises of its own,
ending with unlikely alliances. This production’s
director, Charlotte Moore, has chosen to pre-
sent these one-acts big, broad, and loud, and,
in the Irish Rep’s small downstairs space, this
cartoonish, supersized approach succeeds won-
derfully, especially given a cast—Ciaran Bowling,
Terry Donnelly, Sean Gormley, John Keating,
and Jo Kinsella—that is in complete command1
DANCE
New York City Ballet
It’s hard to imagine the course of twentieth-cen-
tury ballet had the choreographer George Bal-
anchine and the composer Igor Stravinsky not
met while working for the Ballets Russes. Their
dozens of collaborations, both innovative and
popular, include “Apollo” and “Agon”; “Sym-
phony in Three Movements,” from 1972, returns
this season as part of a two-week festival (May
3-15) devoted to Stravinsky’s music. Along
with other ballets by Balanchine—including
his “Firebird,” with its vibrant designs by Marc
Chagall—there will be works by Justin Peck
(“Pulcinella Variations”) and the former City
Ballet dancer Silas Farley. Farley’s “Architects
of Time,” which premières at the spring gala
(May 5), is based on a short poem and a melody
composed by Balanchine as a birthday gift for
Stravinsky, in 1946, and set to a score com-
missioned from the contemporary composer
David K. Israel.—Marina Harss (David H. Koch
Theatre; through May 29.)L.A. Dance Project
Since 2012, this company, founded and directed
by Benjamin Millepied, has been making an
argument for Los Angeles as a center of dance
innovation. For its return to the Joyce, it brings
a sample by a neglected L.A. choreographer,
Bella Lewitzky. Her “Kinaesonata,” from
1970, is a rigorously geometric visualization of
Alberto Ginastera’s Piano Sonata No. 1. Also
on the program are “5 Live Calibrations”—a
Madeline Hollander work that sets up multiple
possible outcomes—and “Adagio in B Minor,”
a duet set to Mozart that the former New York
City Ballet dancer Janie Taylor choreographed
for herself and David Adrian Freeland.—Brian
Seibert (Joyce Theatre; May 3-15.)New York Theatre Ballet
Big changes are afoot at this small company,
founded by the dancer and teacher Diana Byer
in 1978. It was recently announced that Steven
Melendez, a former company dancer whom
Byer spotted when he was a kid living at a Bronx
shelter, will take the reins. Byer’s final season at
Florence Gould Hall includes a new ballet by
the British modern-dance choreographer Rich-
ard Alston, and another by the American Ballet
Theatre principal dancer James Whiteside, set
to mambo music by Tito Puente.—M.H. (Flor-
ence Gould Hall Theatre; May 6-8.)Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre
“Last Ward,” a danced play, is about a man
(Khalifa Natour, the star of the film “The
Band’s Visit”) in a hospital room, facing
death. Written and directed by Amir Nizar
Zuabi, with choreography and music by Samar
Haddad King, the work (in Arabic, with En-
glish subtitles) presents a tragicomic view of
modern medicine, as rounds of doctors and
family visits turn bizarre. The May 6 perfor-
mance will be live-streamed on the Gibney
Dance Web site.—B.S. (Gibney: Agnes Varis
Performing Arts Center; May 5-8 and May 10-12.)in London, provides a perfect setting for this
blackest of comedy jewels.—Elisabeth Vincentelli
(Golden; through June 18.)
A Strange Loop
The protagonist of MichaelR. Jackson’s brazenly
original “big Black queer-ass American Broad-
way show”—which won the Pulitzer Prize for
drama in 2020—is Usher (Jaquel Spivey), a gay,
Black, fat twenty-five-year-old man who works
as an usher at “The Lion King” while writing a
musical called “A Strange Loop,” about a gay,
Black, fat twenty-five-year-old man writing a
musical called “A Strange Loop,” about... you
get the idea. Keeping Usher company are six
Thoughts (the standout cast includes L Morgan
Lee, James Jackson, Jr., and Jason Veasey), who
attack him with sexual self-loathing and financial
and professional anxiety, colluding with his par-
ents, church-bound folks who consider homosex-
uality a sin and wish that their son would make
like Tyler Perry and exploit clichés of Blackness
for profit. Directed by Stephen Brackett, with
inventive choreography by Raja Feather Kelly,
the show entertains and sears in equal measure.
No piety is left unpunctured (there’s a big gos-
pel-pastiche number about AIDS), no brutal
of the style and the substance of the plays.—Ken
Marks (Irish Repertory Theatre; through May 22.)