8 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER30, 2019
presaged the hospital’s mission—Elizabeth Ann
Seton (Kathleen Chalfant) and Pierre Tous-
saint (Alvin Keith)—Cusi Cram’s passionate
tribute to St. Vincent’s, directed by Daniella
Topol, is affectingly performed but conceptually
cluttered. Curiously, it’s most effective in its
passages of exposition, especially as delivered by
Chalfant, and in a lively six-character discussion
of how mismanagement precipitated the hospi-
tal’s demise. The show concludes with a short
walk to the New York City AIDS Memorial,
across the street from where St. Vincent’s once
sprawled.—R.R. (Through Oct. 13.)
Only Yesterday
59E
In September of 1964, the Beatles took a weath-
er-induced break from a gruelling tour of Amer-
ica. The first-time playwright Bob Stevens uses
this moment of relative quiet to imagine the
long day and night that John Lennon (Christo-
pher Sears) and Paul McCartney (Tommy Craw-
ford) spent holed up in a cheap motel room in
Key West. The two young men play out scenes of
exhaustion, boredom, cheekiness, anger, drunk-
enness, and discovery, with, of course, music
(and a killer Elvis impersonation), as both actors
strum and sing appealingly. Apart from the Liv-
erpudlian accents, Sears and Crawford don’t imi-
tate Lennon and McCartney, but they do capture
their alternately clashing and complementary
personas. Some of the jokes have a sitcom-y, pre-
fab (sorry) construction, but, in this production
from Vermont’s Northern Stage, directed by
Carol Dunne, there’s plentiful insight into what
drew these two brilliant lads together, and what
pulled them apart.—K.M. (Through Sept. 29.)
Sea Wall/A Life
Hudson
The monologues that make up this show, di-
rected by Carrie Cracknell, are not so much
acted as presented by Tom Sturridge and Jake
Gyllenhaal. In “Sea Wall,” by Simon Stephens, a
youngish photographer named Alex (Sturridge)
talks adoringly about his family—a wife too
good to be deserved, a beautiful little girl, and a
father-in-law, Arthur, with whom he has gently
antagonistic conversations about the existence
of God. Stephens braids these talks with Alex’s
meditations on the nature and power of water;
we see the heavy ending coming from a nautical
mile away. In “A Life,” by Nick Payne, Gyllen-
haal plays a man grieving for his father as he ex-
pects his first child. Payne flits between the two
cataclysms, first with slow precision, and then,
as the cruxes approach, back and forth cinemat-
ically, the borders showing some slippage. The
scene is nicely done, but it doesn’t lead to much
of a revelation. You might just shrug if the anvil
of these plays’ shared desire weren’t so obvious:
Cry. Feel.—V.C. (8/19/19) (Through Sept. 29.)
Wives
Playwrights Horizons
Jaclyn Backhaus’s new play, with its vastly dif-
ferent settings—sixteenth-century France, nine-
teen-sixties Idaho, nineteen-twenties India—is
rightly called a “kaleidoscopic comedy.” Three
sections present the wives and consorts of
great men (King Henry II, Ernest Heming-
way, Madho Singh II) as they reckon with their
1
NIGHTLIFE
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.Jon Batiste
Café Carlyle
Jon Batiste, the vivacious keyboardist, singer,
and bandleader for the “Late Show with Ste-
phen Colbert,” always brings the party with
him, and this tony boîte should surrender help-
lessly to his charms. Despite his high-energy
sets, Batiste, armed with his trademark mouth-
blown melodica, maintains a steady standard of
dexterous musicianship—as demonstrated on
his recent live album, “Anatomy of Angels”—no
matter how spirited the proceedings get.—Steve
Futterman (Sept. 24-28.)Evan Christopher
Mezzrow
The rich musical heritage of New Orleans pro-
vides lifeblood to such dedicated musicians as the
clarinettist and soprano saxophonist Evan Chris-
topher and his fellow Big Easy collaborator, the
pianist David Torkanowsky—two wizardly play-
ers who draw upon a century of fertile inspiration
in their music. Allegiance to tradition may be
admirable, but what makes this pair exceptional
is the vitality they bring to venerable work; to-
gether, they pay forward a legacy.—S.F. (Sept. 25.)Injury Reserve
Gramercy Theatre
The Phoenix-bred trio Injury Reserve approach
hip-hop with the attitude of deconstructionists.
Their producer, Parker Corey, assembles beats
made of clamorous percussion and shifty melo-
dies that can transform from minimalist to maxi-
malist in a matter of seconds; the rhymers Ritchie
With a T and Stepa J. Groggs complement that
sound palette with tricks of their own, often trad-
ing meta-commentary on the music industry, rap
itself, and their relationship with it. The group’s
witty self-titled début album, from May, empha-
sizes such contrasts and peculiarities. Here, they
appear with support from the abstract producer
Slauson Malone.—Briana Younger (Sept. 25.)Arca
The Shed
The Venezuelan singer-songwriter, producer,
and performance artist Arca defies easy de-scription; she has shaped her career around the
experimental and the enigmatic, transforming
with each new release (the latest of which was
her self-titled album, from 2017). Here, she
presents “Mutant;Faith,” an immersive four-part
residency offering a unique experience every
night. She débuts some of her latest work, and,
with assistance from a team of artistic disrup-
tors—including the d.j. Total Freedom and the
interaction designer Daito Manabe—she contin-
ues probing the boundaries of art, technology,
and sound.—B.Y. (Sept. 25-28.)Long Beard
Baby’s All Right
Leslie Bear, the New Jersey musician who goes
by Long Beard, introduced her fuzzy, misty-
voiced dream pop on her aptly titled début
album, “Sleepwalker,” from 2015. On the rec-
ord, she tucks gossamer vocals beneath jagged,
shoegaze-inspired guitars and hints of reverb,
crafting an exquisitely forlorn signature that
is redolent of a forgotten time and place. Her
new album, “Means to Me,” features more or-
nate production without sacrificing restrained
beauty or poignancy.—Julyssa Lopez (Sept. 26.)Massive Attack
Radio City Music Hall
The third Massive Attack album, “Mezzanine,”
from 1998, remains the British trip-hop pi-
oneer’s most ominous work; it’s perfect for
revival in a time that makes that era seem like
a pleasure cruise. The live rearrangements are
crisp and tart, the stage show is busy (shifting
lights and graphics symbolize dystopia more
convincingly than its litany of flashing slogans),
and the band’s guest vocalists—the reggae leg-
end Horace Andy and the front woman of the
Cocteau Twins, Elisabeth Fraser—add warmth
and gravitas.—Michaelangelo Matos (Sept. 26-27.)Lil Ugly Mane
Brooklyn Bazaar
Travis Miller has numerous aliases under which
he records various styles of music, from noise
to hardcore to hip-hop, but the most venerated
is Lil Ugly Mane. In the early years of this
decade, Miller became a force in underground
hip-hop circles with a string of cerebral releases
under the moniker, but retirement loomed,
seemingly born of a need to quell the popu-
larity and the expectations that had grown
beyond his comfort. The last full-length re-
cord bearing the name came in 2015—Miller’s
reëmergence as the tormented Bedwetter and
in the now disbanded trio Secret Circle fol-
lowed—but, like any cult figure, Lil Ugly Mane
is eternal, if only as an ideal.—B.Y. (Sept. 28.)LSDXOXO
Nowadays
During the nineties, queer ball culture and lol-
lipop-and-glow-stick raves were generally sep-
arate musical arenas. But their respective tastes
for ostentation go great together, like glitter
and glue, and that combination is at the heart
of LSDXOXO’s music. Born Rashaad Glasgow
in Philadelphia and now based in Berlin, the
techno producer and d.j. makes brash tracksfamous partners’ stories. Backhaus originally
imagined the play as three separate pieces, and
that idea remains in its DNA, creating an iden-
tity crisis in the work, the peculiar progression
of which seems to lack any concrete logic. Di-
rected by Margot Bordelon, the play starts off
lively, like a zany, jocose “Blackadder”-style
feminist comedy; Adina Verson, as Queen Cath-
erine de’ Medici’s cook, goes full madcap ham.
But each sketch feels incomplete, and the show
sloughs off the comedy, untethering itself for an
incantatory performance-art finale about female
identity.—M.P. (Through Oct. 6.)