Then play on.
An excellent diversion with Shakespeare, with much, much more to come… plus live music picks for the next seven days in NYC.
No musicking during the week past, and still there was music: regal heraldry and prognosticated doom contained in the score Frank London composed for a Compagnia de’ Colombari production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, directed by Karin Coonrod at La MaMa E.T.C. in the East Village, on Sunday afternoon.
The score, which London had mentioned in the conversation that fed my New York Times feature about him (gift link), was what urged me to attend. But truthfully, I don’t need any urging to attend Shakespeare, whose spell is for me unwavering, and Lear in particular requires no special pleading.
This was my first Coonrod production of Shakespeare – of anything, in fact – and it used a method I’ve come to understand is a regular part of her arsenal: multiplicity, as in multiple players performing the same role. Ben Brantley’s vivid description of multiple Shylocks, in a New York Times review (gift link) of a 2017 Coonrod staging of The Merchant of Venice for Peak Performances in Montclair, makes a strong case for the efficacy of the practice.
Her Lear took the technique to its logical, or perhaps illogical, extreme. Every player in the cast, and often several at once, portrayed Shakespeare’s doomed king, while also veering off regularly to a second role: one Goneril, another Gloucester, a third Edgar, and so on. Everyone was costumed more or less identically by Oana Botez in tatty robes over utilitarian garb, topped with towering paper crowns made by artist Tine Kindermann (London’s wife).
During the final performance of an all-too-brief run on Sunday, 10 massed Lears stamped, barked, and agonized throughout the relatively intimate space of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre. They pushed around and through the audience, and sometimes interacted fleetingly with individual viewers. Anyone removing the crown signified a shift into a different role; recalling which actor was playing what other role became easier quickly. No one played Lear alone, though some actors held the position longer, and to greater impact.
“See better,” Kent urges Lear, after the old king has partitioned his realm and is breaking painfully with his faithful Cordelia, and with Kent as well. But Coonrod’s multiplicity troubles that direction, confronting an audience with an overwhelming, contradictory barrage that all at once could signify Lear’s slipping grip on reality, his continued stature as representative of a nation, his scarcely ceded power and overwhelming presence, even the numerical nuisance of the oversize retinue he imposes on Goneril and Regan.
The entire cast was so unified, stylish, and courageous that singling out any one actor feels vaguely inappropriate. That said, I have to mention being especially moved by the penetrating purity Celeste Sena brought to Cordelia, the mellifluous whimsy of Lukas Papenfusscline as the king’s Fool, Elijah Martinez’s animal seduction as Edmund, and the way Jo Mei’s Regan leapt from controlled cunning to frothing horror in the moment of Gloucester’s blinding.
Coonrod, cast, and crew made optimal use of the space, effecting more than one theatrical coup using a bare minimum of set pieces and props. I’ll be watching for more opportunities to see this company’s work, in and out of Shakespeare, and I’m grateful anew to Frank London for spurring this introduction.
As I mentioned already, King Lear has closed already. (If you’ve read this far, you probably know already about another Lear hitting town in October.) But should you find yourself in the mood for the bard, summer remains a season of plenty. Even with Central Park’s Delacorte Theater closed for renovation, Shakespeare carries on at this or that park under the Public Theater aegis; live shows have concluded, but the Public is screening Much Ado About Nothing, filmed during a 2019 Delacorte run directed by Kenny Leon, in free events tomorrow evening at McCarren Park, July 24 at Brooklyn War Memorial, August 2 at the Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and so on. (Go here for details.)
I’ll confess that I’ve yet to see one of the storied free Shakespeare productions the Classical Theatre of Harlem mounts each summer in Marcus Garvey Park’s Richard Rodgers Auditorium. But last year’s presentation of Malvolio, an original sequel to Twelfth Night penned by playwright Betty Shamieh, was electrifying: loud, bawdy, intelligent, accomplished, and profoundly musical. This year the company is presenting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with comedian Russell Peters playing Nick Bottom in most performances, and I definitely plan to catch it. The show runs through July 28, and you can tender your RSVP here.
Speaking of Twelfth Night, the Hudson Classical Theater Company will present that comedy July 25–Aug. 18 on the North Patio of The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park. Before then, the company’s production of Coriolanus runs on Thursdays through Saturdays until July 21, and admission is pay-what-you-can; details here. And, as it happens, Drilling Company Theatre is also presenting Twelfth Night as its “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot” offering this year. The show runs July 25–Aug. 3 in the parking lot of Lower East Side Preparatory High School, 145 Stanton St. Admission is free; details are here.
The Night After Night Watch.
July 16–23
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
16
Nathalie Joachim
Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St., East Village
Tuesday, July 16 at 7pm; $30 plus two drinks or one food item minimum
publictheater.org
Apologies for the short notice… I only just happened to spot this Nathalie Joachim engagement at Joe’s Pub while poking around the Public Theater website gathering links for the Shakespearean bonanza above. The dynamic flutist, vocalist, and composer leads a trio in a performance of music from her beautiful, buoyant, and assured recent album, Ki moun ou ye.
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isabel crespo pardo
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, July 17–Saturday, July 20 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com
The gifted, imaginative, and versatile Latinx improvising vocalist and composer isabel crespo pardo comes to The New School for a Stone residency showcasing a range of creative contexts. Their series starts Wednesday with a solo performance featuring voice, piano, and electronics. A duo with trumpeter Chris Williams follows on Thursday, then a quartet on Friday, ending with the deft, expressive trio sinonó (with cellist Lester St. Louis and bassist Henry Fraser) on Saturday.
18
Susie Ibarra
Asia Society
725 Park Ave., Upper East Side
Thursday, July 18 and Saturday, July 20 at 7:30pm; $30, seniors and students $25
asiasociety.org
Presented under the aegis of COAL + ICE, an ongoing exhibition of photography and video art exploring the causes and consequences of climate change, Sky Islands is a new work by Filipinx composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra honoring the rain forest ecosystems of Luzon, Philippines. Joining Ibarra for the occasion are flutist Claire Chase (about whom more immediately below), pianist Alex Peh, percussionist Levy Lorenzo, and the Bergamot Quartet.
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Claire Chase
The Underground at Jaffe Drive, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side
Friday, July 19 at 8pm; free admission
lincolncenter.org
Living Music Underground, a four-concert new-music series curated by the enterprising violist, educator, and burgeoning composer Nadia Sirota, gets underway with the industrious genius flutist Claire Chase, performing in the underground driveway-turned-nightclub beneath Josie Robertson Plaza. Precisely what she’ll play is anyone’s guess, but certainly she’s got plenty of repertoire to choose from in her ongoing Density 2036 initiative.
The Ritual of Breath
Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center
Amsterdam Ave. at W. 62nd St., Upper West Side
Friday, July 19 at 8:30pm; free admission
lincolncenter.org
Billed as “a transdisciplinary opera and creative act of resistance” fashioned by composer Jonathan Berger, visual artist Enrico Riley, and poet/librettist Vievee Francis, The Ritual of Breath examines the state of Black life here and throughout the U.S. 10 years after the murder of Eric Garner. The presentation serves as the centerpiece of a citywide activation involving other disparate events, including To Breathe Is to Triumph, listed below.
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To Breathe Is to Triumph
First Unitarian Congregational Society
119 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn
Saturday, July 20 at 8pm; $25
issueprojectroom.org
Presented by Issue Project Room as part of a citywide initiative relating to The Ritual of Breath (listed immediately above), To Breathe Is to Triumph brings together two mighty forces in contemporary Black creative music, spiritual illumination, and political activism: free-jazz quintet Irreversible Entanglements, featuring the mesmerizing poet Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), and vocalist Shara Lunon, who performs with flutist justine lee hooper and projected art by Synead Nichols.
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Tony Malaby/Tim Berne/Brandon Lopez/Tom Rainey
LunÁtico
486 Halsey St., Bedford-Stuyvesant
Sunday, July 21 at 9 & 10:15pm; $10 suggested donation
barlunatico.com
Many, many moons ago, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing saxophonists Tim Berne and Tony Malaby working together with drummer Tom Rainey in a few different situations: playing Berne tunes with bassist Michael Formanek under the moniker No(h)bag at the Knitting Factory, and blowing freeform with Angelica Sanchez at the Internet Café. Two decades later, with a pandemic shuttering conventional venues, Malaby enlisted Berne, among others, to keep their chops sharp by blowing under a New Jersey overpass. All of which is meant to say that even if there’s no set destination for tonight’s set, you’re in sure hands with these drivers.
23
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side
Tuesday, July 23 and Wednesday, July 24 at 7:30pm; choose-what-you-pay
lincolncenter.org
Music director Jonathon Heyward, subject of an illuminating new profile just published by The New York Times (gift link), leads the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center – the crack ensemble formerly known as the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – in a program meant to illuminate some of the changes at hand during this summer’s re-envisioned agenda. In addition to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”), the program includes the North American premiere of City of Floating Sounds by Huang Ruo—which actually starts an hour in advance of curtain time via a smartphone app that plays fragments from the piece as you make your way to the hall, intensifying in proximity to other concertgoers.
Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.