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      Interview: Coming Clear about Dirty Hearts

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      Writer Paul Murphy on Dirty Hearts, playing at Old Red Lion 5 – 30 April

      Fringe theatre makers are always coming up with new ways to attract an audience. But we can’t remember one offering a bottle of champagne to a lucky winner if they bought their ticket before the end of February. Of course, gimmicks aside, fringe theatre lives and dies on the quality of its shows. And we reckon Pine Street Productions‘ Dirty Hearts is one that will be worthwhile even without the bribe of that champagne.

      Dirty Hearts will play at Old Red Lion from 5 – 30 April, tickets here.

      So, we thought we’d ask the play’s writer, Paul Murphy, just what it’s all about and why they highlight their No Covid, No Brexit, No Boris rule!

      Let’s start with the obvious, what can you tell us about Dirty Hearts?

      Dirty Hearts is a comedy about the relationships between four friends – Julienne, Ben, Simon and Laura, and what happens when Ben asks Julienne to authenticate a painting owned by one of his clients. It’s about love, truth, friendship and choice.  

      You describe it as “An Existential Comedy for the Age of Anxiety”. That’s quite the mouthful, but what do you really mean by it?

      Everyone has probably said at some point ‘I’m having an existential crisis’: with this show I’m digging a little deeper into what that means. The play is informed by the work of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, amongst other. But it isn’t four people sitting around wearing berets and asking; ‘What does it mean to exist?’ It’s about the choices we make and how those choices are what define us as people. It’s about how we see ourselves and how that image of ourselves isn’t always accurate, especially when we’re faced with hard decisions.

      The play looks like it will question the morals of its characters. Is that a fair assessment?

      Moral choices are absolutely at the heart of the play. What’s the right thing to do? Do markets have a responsibility to be moral? The tension between moral absolutism and what Simone De Beauvoir called ‘the ethics of ambiguity’. If that sounds too heavy, don’t worry there’s still plenty of jokes. This isn’t a philosophical symposium, it’s about four people trying to make choices under pressure: the conflict between our ethics and our desires.

      How do wealth managers, art appraisers, doctors and conflict resolution all tie together in the play then?

      Ah, well you’ll have to come and see the play. But the story revolves around one of the characters being asked to authenticate a recently discovered Renaissance painting. That’s the art. The fact that it could be worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of pounds means that for two of the characters the stakes are huge. Conflict resolution provides a framework for how we attempt to resolve conflict, and as every doctor has to abide by the Hippocratic Oath we have a a set of ethics and values that are put to the test. The push and pull of the rational scientific approach and the irrationality of human desire. And when you add love into the mix….

      You make clear in your press release that “This play makes no mention whatsoever of the following: COVID, BREXIT, or Boris Johnson”. In that case, who do you feel should come to see Dirty Hearts?

      The No Covid, No Brexit, No Boris is just my way of saying that if you want a break from the headlines, then this is the show for you. There has been, and will continue to be, some very good work that examines the last few years. But this is a play about conflicting values in a more universal sense, so wherever you sit on the political spectrum there will be an argument that you can relate to. If you think we need a re-evaluation of values as a society you’ll like Simon, if you think capitalism isn’t such a bad think then Ben’s your guy. Need a rational approach to decision making? Laura makes the case. And if certainty is important to you, then Julienne has it covered. 

      Dirty Hearts is a comedy about relationships, so it’s for everyone, regardless of age, background, politics. Everyone has been in love, or been through a heartbreak. If you’ve fallen in love, fallen out of love. Been torn between friends, had to make difficult moral choices, then this is a show for you. 

      What made you decide to give away that bottle of champagne? Are we still seeing difficulties in filling seats in fringe venues because of the massive ticket discounting happening at the larger venues?

      The champagne: well, the play’s above a pub so that seemed appropriate. Selling tickets is always tough, especially for a small independent production. But we have four terrific actors who you will have seen in TV shows like Harlots and The Crown and from work at places like The Almeida. There’s a fantastic director and a wonderful creative team (the set is really going to be something special) so this is a high value production, with tickets at £20 at the most, so it’s a bargain. 

      And what next for Dirty Hearts and Pine Street once this run is completed?

      The next play we’re hoping to do is Unicorn, a three hander set in a tech start-up. Dirty Hearts was only possible because of an investment in Tesla, so Elon Musk, if you’re reading this, send us a cheque for the next one.

      Thanks again to Paul for finding time to chat to us about the play. You can catch Dirty Hearts at Old Red Lion Theatre between 5 – 30 April, bookings can be made via the below link. More

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      Interview: C’mon Kids, Get Writing

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      Helen Monks and Matt Woodhead from Lung Theatre on their latest project, Unmute

      We’ve had Matt Woodhead from Lung Theatre on our podcast way back in Episode 7, when he was telling us all about the Who Cares play and campaign that emerged from it. This time around he came along with his colleague from Lung, Helen Monks.

      Not ones to sit back and take it easy, Lung are now in the midst of seeking out young writers for Unmute, a writing competition for 11 – 18 year olds. It’s a chance to write a monolgue of up to 500 words, with winning entries getting the chance to be performed live on stage as well as being published.

      Helen and Matt tell us all about how to enter the competition, how they gope to hear from voices all around the country, and just what they feel might make a great submission.

      Helen also briefly mentions The Trojan Horse Affair podcast, which looked at what really happened in Birmingham when it was alleged Islamic extremists were infiltrating the city’s schools. The podcast can be found here.

      The closing date for entries is 8 May. You can also find lots of support on how to write and submit your entries on their website here and their Twitter account here.

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      ‘CODA’ Is Being Developed Into a Stage Musical by Deaf West

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      The theater plans to work with the Oscar-nominated film’s producers to adapt the story of a teenager torn between helping her deaf family and singing.The Oscar-nominated film “CODA,” in which a hearing child of deaf parents pursues a passion for singing, is being developed into a stage musical by Deaf West Theater, a highly regarded Los Angeles-based nonprofit with a strong track record in musical theater.The project, which does not yet have a creative team or a production calendar, is a joint venture between the theater and two of the companies that produced the movie, Vendôme Pictures and Pathé Films.“CODA,” written and directed by Sian Heder, is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture. The film is about a high school student torn between helping her family, which runs a fishing boat, and pursuing a newfound interest in singing; she is the only hearing member of her family. (CODA is an acronym for child of deaf adult.)“‘CODA’ is unique among the entire canon of feature films in that it features us in our natural setting: among the world at large and among our own, often at home or in private settings,” DJ Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West, wrote in an email interview. “As a Deaf person, I knew from the start that ‘CODA’ would make a perfect musical: It addresses our relationship with music and how we move through the world of sound like immigrants in a foreign country, learning new, seemingly arbitrary rules on the fly.”Deaf West, founded in 1991, is the nation’s most prominent theater focusing on what it calls “Deaf-centered storytelling,” and its productions are generally performed in both American Sign Language and spoken English by casts that include deaf and hearing artists.The theater has previously staged five musicals, including two revivals that transferred to Broadway, “Big River” in 2003 and “Spring Awakening” in 2015. Both were nominated for Tony Awards. “CODA” would be the second musical originated by the company; the first was “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” in 2007.“Professional musical theater was largely inaccessible to our community for the most part until our production of ‘Big River’ was staged in bigger houses in L.A. and N.Y.,” Kurs wrote. “Now we have musical theater aficionados within our community, and that’s a beautiful thing. I would wager that the art form of signed musical theater is still in its infancy.”10 Movies to Watch This Oscar SeasonCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Feature: Moniker Culture celebrates Women, Art, Fashion…and NFTs.

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      This month, Moniker Culture launched an NFT art exhibition celebrating women artists and hosted at the Adidas flagship store in Oxford Street.

      As you entered, you were greeted by an array of vibrant colours, with artists creating their work on-site, and many moving installations. All four floors were utilised for the exhibition with the art work seamlessly accompanying the decor of the fashionable sportswear store. It was a real assault upon the senses – but in an intriguing way.

      The event was very busy- mostly dominated by the Zillennial/Gen Z demographic who busied themselves snapping selfies around the installations and taking the opportunity to create some art work of their own at the many creativity tables dotted around the store.

      Some notable artists/art work were:

      Mariam Omoyele: @o.a.mariamBeryl B: @berylbiliciAndrea Love:  @andreaanimatesMaliha Abidi maliha_z_art‘Brown Ochre’ by Nkosi Ndlovu‘Power in the Puff’ by Shai Digital‘Club Church’ by Jada Bruneyand the work curated by Haart: @houseofafrican

      NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are one of the latest buzzwords of the 21st century, with anything and everything being sold as some irreplaceable one off that will eventually appreciate with time. The topic often engenders very polarising opinions, which is very understandable. It’s largely an elite few who subjectively inform the rest of the world what new, non-essential item is now considered ‘valuable’ and it’s this unadulterated, consumerist capitalism that often turns the stomach of even the most ardent art lover. The consumerism overshadows the art itself and aggressively reminds us of how divided this world is – where you can literally pass multiple homeless people en route to an exhibition where a digital image may be sold for an exorbitant amount. The juxtaposition of these extremes can be very tricky to reconcile. 

      Yet being an artist is a difficult profession. How will these women continue to do what they love without financial sustenance? And does the introduction of money, no matter the amount, automatically negate the artistic integrity?

      Beneath the lights, trainers and NFTs and at the heart of this event was the positive promotion of women artists and their work, which is the most important aspect of the whole exhibition. These artists have put their life and soul into creating work that inspires, confronts and unites its audiences. Work that pushes the envelope of a very, traditionally, male-centric industry.

      That, in my opinion, is the true non-fungible aspect of this art and it can neither be bought nor sold, yet it is truly priceless.

      To see more of the work on display at the exhibition, visit here. More

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      Debra Messing Masters Baking for ‘Birthday Candles’

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      An actress with an obsessive work ethic, Messing is learning to make a cake onstage in “Birthday Candles” on Broadway.“Birthday Candles,” the existential dramedy now in previews on Broadway, relies on a simple recipe: an eight-step process for a golden butter cake. At every performance, the actress playing Ernestine, the show’s Everywoman heroine, bakes that cake onstage, in real time.Here, in Roundabout Theater Company’s production, that actress is Debra Messing, which means that “Birthday Candles” depends on yet another recipe: Find a Hollywood star. Rehearse. Repeat.If you’re wondering whether Messing is a baker, let’s just say that when she tried out the recipe during the first wave of the pandemic, the cake exploded. She had added nearly two cups of baking powder, rather than nearly two teaspoons.“It took me two days to clean out the oven,” she recalled in an interview. “I can honestly say that the baking has become the thing that I am most nervous about.”Considering that Messing never leaves the stage, and that Ernestine ages 90 years — from 17 to 107 — in 90 breathless minutes, this is saying something.MESSING, A 53-YEAR-OLD ACTRESS who marries daffy comedy to a ramrod work ethic, was speaking on a recent afternoon in an upstairs lounge at the American Airlines Theater, where “Birthday Candles” opens April 10. She wore a purple sweater and a surgical face mask, with her famous red hair mounded on top of her head — less of a bun than an entire gâteau.John Earl Jelks, left, with Messing in the play, which opens April 10 at the American Airlines Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs Messing tells it, she has always been hungry: “to act, to learn, to progress.” Taken to “Annie,” a musical about a spunky redhead, as a 7-year-old, she decided that acting was for her. Even then, she took her craft seriously; the following summer, she played a blind girl in a play at camp and insisted on rehearsing with her eyes closed. She walked off the stage and into the orchestra pit. It was the first of many workplace injuries to come.Messing wanted to be a musical theater performer, a triple threat. Her dancing, she said, is merely adequate, so she tops out at a double threat. After college at Brandeis and graduate school at New York University, she talked herself into a lead role on the sitcom “Ned and Stacey.” Michael J. Weithorn, the creator, hadn’t thought that she came across as Jewish enough or neurotic enough. But Messing is, by her own proud admission, both of these things.“Happy neuroticism,” said Vivienne Benesch, who is directing “Birthday Candles” and has known Messing since graduate school. (Benesch has a lot of memories from those days; one involves a unitard.)“Ned and Stacey” ran for two years. When it ended, Messing booked “Will & Grace,” a sitcom about a gay lawyer (Eric McCormack) and his best friend, a straight interior designer (Messing). Though a conventional network sitcom, “Will & Grace” was a milestone for queer representation, and it allowed Messing to refine her gift for dizzy, kinetic physical comedy.“She’s not afraid to show up and fall over things in service of the story,” McCormack said in a phone interview, as he was recovering from emergency dental surgery — but still wanted to speak about his friend.McCormack also confirmed her reputation as something of a workaholic. “That is her strong suit,” he said. “She will delve.”When the original run of “Will & Grace” ended, in 2006, Messing starred in a mini-series, “The Starter Wife,” that later came back for an additional season. In 2011, she heard about a new musical drama, “Smash,” a brainchild of the playwright Theresa Rebeck and Steven Spielberg that was planned for Showtime before it moved to NBC.“I was like, ‘I have to be part of this,’” Messing said. “I am going to be able to play a character where I watch people sing and dance all day long.”She was cast as Julia, the book writer of a Broadway-bound musical about Marilyn Monroe. Rebeck recalled being glad to have her, saying: “She’s extremely beautiful. And she’s funny. She’s fearlessly funny.” (Rebeck also said, perhaps less generously, that Messing had a lot of input in Julia’s controversial, scarf-forward wardrobe.)Despite a strong pilot, “Smash” splintered. Messing blamed the firing of Rebeck after the first season, but problems had surfaced earlier. When it ended, after two seasons, Messing went to Broadway for John Patrick Shanley’s oddball romantic comedy “Outside Mullingar.” She played a detective on “The Mysteries of Laura,” another show that didn’t last for long. Then “Will & Grace” was revived — something Messing preferred not to discuss. When it finished in 2020, after three seasons, she was ready for Broadway again.“Birthday Candles,” by Noah Haidle, premiered at the Detroit Public Theater in 2018. A year later, Roundabout, which has a long relationship with Haidle, greenlit a cold reading. Haidle requested Messing because, he said, “She’s good at acting and a very famous person.”Messing, who listens to the “Birthday Candles” script as she falls asleep, said, “Doing the work gives me peace.”Kholood Eid for The New York TimesBenesch, the director, sent the script to Messing, who read it on her bed, laughing, then crying. She arrived for the reading more prepared than anyone Haidle had ever seen. Afterward, Todd Haimes, Roundabout’s artistic director, said that he wanted the play for Broadway. But it seemed as if there were other plays contending for a slot. So, to sweeten the deal, Messing sent him a cake, with sprinkles and “Let’s Do It” written in icing.Had she baked it?“Oh, hell no,” Messing said. “I wanted him to say yes.” The next day, he did, but then the pandemic pushed opening night back a couple of years.THE PLAY, WHICH GESTURES toward modernist classics like Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner,” takes place on a single set: the kitchen of a middle-class home in Grand Rapids, Mich. Ernestine enters as a teenager. “I am going to be a rebel against the universe,” she says. “Wage war with the everyday.”When the lights go down 90 minutes later, she is a great-great grandmother, reconciled to the universe. In between there are births, death, comedies, tragedies. Every scene takes place on one of her birthdays and the golden butter cake is baked continuously, without benefit of a mixer. (They’re too loud.)During the pandemic lockdown, Messing caught up on “Real Housewives” shows and attempted the ukulele. She also studied the script for “Birthday Candles.” Some parts came to her easily; she identified with the young Ernestine’s passion and expansiveness. The breakdown of the middle-aged Ernestine’s marriage, her experiences of loss — these resonated, too. But what Ernestine undergoes later is unfamiliar. “I haven’t experienced any of it yet,” Messing said.She watched YouTube videos of centenarians: studying how they moved, how they sat. She also worked with a voice coach to learn about what happens to the larynx as women age. Ernestine never leaves the stage, so there are no prosthetics or wigs. Aging, then, is effected through body and voice, plus subtle changes in hairstyle and eyewear.“I’m not 107,” Messing said. “I don’t know anyone who’s 107. So part of it is trusting that the homework will protect me and support me.”It’s working, for Haidle anyway. “Whatever she’s doing,” he said, “it’s like a magic trick.”Part of this trick: Messing listens to the script every night while she sleeps. (“So intense,” Haidle said.) This, she believes, helps her learn lines. It also makes her feel that she is doing her utmost. “Doing the work gives me peace,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s helping or not, but putting it on and falling asleep to it, I like to think that it’s getting embedded in a deeper way.”Nothing about her approach seems light. Typically, actors move through technical rehearsals casually. But during a recent one — as Messing and a co-star, Enrico Colantoni, worked through a scene — she seemed to give a full performance for each pass. She even wanted him to do a real kiss.“Kiss me,” she insisted. “Kiss me, come on.” Under her sweater, blue this time, she was wearing a pain relief patch, because hunching over as a 107-year-old, as she had done in rehearsal the day before, had put a lot of strain on her lower back.Baking has required extra preparation. It’s a science, Messing said, and science was never really her thing. It doesn’t help that each stir, crack and sprinkle is precisely timed to Ernestine’s milestone events.“The milk is the thing that really just makes me want to go to a sanitarium,” she said.But Messing has practiced — and practiced, and practiced — and she believes that by the time the play opens, she will be able to bake the cake comfortably, reliably linking each step to Ernestine’s sweet and bitter journey through life.Still, there are limits. “Frosting?” she said. “Forget it.”At home, she has finally made the cake successfully and marveled at how humble staples — butter, sugar, eggs — combine into something astonishing, a moment of transcendence wrested from the ordinary. So even though allergies and intolerances and an eating plan she adopted around the time she turned 50 mean that Messing avoids nearly all of the ingredients, she tried a bite.“I was like, This is so delicious,” she said. “I was like, Oh yeah, I get it.” More

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      ‘Music Man’ Sets Box Office Record for a Reopened Broadway

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      The Hugh Jackman-led revival has 76 trombones, 110 cornets, and took in $3.5 million in ticket sales last week, more than any show since the pandemic began.Broadway has a new box office leader: A starry revival of “The Music Man” grossed $3.5 million last week, the most of any show since theaters reopened after the long pandemic shutdown.The musical, with a cast led by the ever popular Hugh Jackman, is outselling “Hamilton” and every other show, triumphing over tepid reviews as it plays to full houses and sells tickets at top-tier prices.Data released Tuesday by the Broadway League showed that “The Music Man” had grossed over $3 million for five weeks in a row.The industry’s three big mainstays remain strong: Last week, “Hamilton” brought in $2.3 million, “Wicked” was at $1.9 million and “The Lion King” at $1.8 million.The box office numbers were the first for individual shows to be publicly released by the League since March of 2020, and suggested, as expected, that the relatively small number of mostly big-name shows that survived the Omicron spike of the coronavirus late last year are fairly hardy, and most appear to be bringing in more money than they are spending on a week-to-week basis. The industry faces another stress test ahead, as the number of shows increases; no one knows whether there is enough audience to support the newcomers as well as the established productions.Among the highlights, according to the new information: A revival of the Neil Simon comedy “Plaza Suite” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick is starting very strong, reflecting the enormous appeal of the two stars, who are married to each other and have not appeared together onstage for years. The play, still in previews, grossed $1.7 million last week, which is a huge number for a small-cast play in a modest-size venue.“The Music Man,” which also stars the gifted Sutton Foster, had the highest average ticket price, at $283, and the highest premium ticket price, at $697. “Plaza Suite” was also selling notably high-priced premium seats, at $549, reflecting Parker’s popularity.The numbers do show signs of concern for some shows. “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” played to houses that were only 55 percent full last week, grossing $778,000. And a new musical, “Paradise Square,” started slow in previews — the show drew large audiences (it was 97 percent full) but with unsustainably low ticket prices (it grossed just $355,000, with an average ticket price of $47). And sales for shows including “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Come From Away” and “Chicago” have notably softened since before the pandemic.But there is also good news for other shows. In particular, the newly released box office data suggests that “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has benefited from its decision to consolidate from a two-part play to one part during the pandemic. The show grossed $1.7 million last week; the two-part version had been bringing in around $1 million during non-holiday weeks before the pandemic.By the end of last week there were 22 shows running in the 41 Broadway houses, up from a low of 19 earlier in the year. The average ticket price was a healthy $136, and 92 percent of all seats were occupied, although there were fewer spots to fill overall because so many theaters did not have shows in them. More

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      Review: ‘Bruise & Thorn,’ a Gay Fantasia at a Laundromat

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      Hip-hop, impromptu duckwalks and loving shade fill C. Julian Jiménez’s new play about two cousins dreaming of escaping their day jobs.At a combination Pizza Hut-Taco Bell in Jamaica, Queens, the gender-fluid Thorn works on a rap — hinged on the line “I gotta leave New York City” — that will hopefully lead to an escape by way of an “America’s Got Talent” victory. Because Thorn, a trans woman, is played with irresistible magnetism by the nightlife performer Jae W.B., it’s almost impossible not to back her.“Bruise & Thorn,” an eccentric new play by C. Julian Jiménez now being presented by Pipeline Theater Company at A.R.T./New York Theaters, gives the character a chance to freestyle, vogue and charm her way into the audience’s heart.Never mind that her cousin Bruise (a very appealing Fernando Contreras) has to hold down the fort at the laundromat where they both work while Thorn dreams up her speedy liberation. Saving up for his own aspirations of culinary school, Bruise’s tender gay heart must make room for Old Fart (Lou Liberatore, very funny), the homeless man he allows to rest in the laundromat bathroom, and his demanding boss, Mrs. Gallo (a fiery Zuleyma Guevara), who’s roped him into her cockfighting racket.Hanging outside is Lizard (Carson Fox Harvey), a sketchy figure who dangles his commitment to Thorn on the condition she drop the in-between-ness of her identity — it’s implied she sometimes uses he/him pronouns to appease him — and live as a man. Lizard’s character is not as thoroughly realized as the rest, perhaps by design, to keep him an enigma, but his ratty plaid boxers convey more than enough. (Costumes are by Saawan Tiwari.)On top of its well-realized performances, “Bruise & Thorn” counts a memorable authenticity among its best qualities; the work is very queer, very Latinx, very New York City. Filled with hip-hop, impromptu duckwalks and loving shade, Jiménez’s humor is performed with contagious enthusiasm by his two leads. At the start of the play, when the characters’ personalities are being introduced, it is almost impossible to believe W.B. and Contreras did not compose the material themselves, they inhabit it so naturally.Mixing resourcefulness with playfulness, the production eschews realism for gay fantasia; Sasha Schwartz’s laundromat set looks like a McDonald’s playground designed for the Teletubbies. Multicolored splotches adorn the floors, with washers and dryers and multipurpose cardboard boxes that lend a fitting oddball charm to the final scenes: a series of drag ball competitions representing cockfights (with the birds fabulously played by androgynous dancers) and a climactic argument between the two cousins.Once the balls are introduced, Jiménez’s play becomes even less interested in realism, employing fantasy as a literal way of getting these characters out of their situations. It can feel like a bit of a narrative cop-out — I’m still not sure how, exactly, some of these plot threads are resolved — but the scenes are satisfying enough to wash away most concerns.These flights of fancy are fundamental to the play’s queerness, but Jesse Jou’s unhurried direction drains momentum from the characters’ risky decisions. Whereas the initial hangout scenes let the cast’s whip-smart comic delivery and charisma dictate their pace, the tenser ones later on are allowed too many pauses, too much scoffing and hesitation, as if to telegraph gravity through passivity.Jiménez is smart in not promising more than this lighthearted play can handle when it comes to the ideas of gender, identity and class it evokes. For all their dreaming, “Bruise & Thorn” knows exactly how to stay woke.Bruise & ThornThrough March 27 at Mezzanine Theater at A.R.T./New York Theaters, Manhattan; pipelinetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      ‘At the Wedding’ Review: Cocktails, Dancing and an Albatross

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      A trenchant new comedy by Bryna Turner features Mary Wiseman in a comic tour-de-force as the guest most likely to make a scene.“I’m starting to think this wedding needs a villain,” says Carlo, as if the one she has semi-crashed were a murder mystery.Certainly there are plenty of suspects behaving badly, chief among them Carlo herself, a freelance snark machine with a hole in her heart and an alcohol-fueled taste for the piercing aperçu. She terrifies the children’s table with a hellish lesson about the fate of romance: “the worst pain you’ll feel in your life.” She’s also, uh-oh, the bride’s former lover — you know, the one who neglected to R.S.V.P.Though it’s not by a long shot the first time a comedy has mined the nuptials-with-an-ex-to-grind setup, Bryna Turner’s “At the Wedding,” which opened on Monday at the Claire Tow Theater, offers a fresh and trenchant take on the genre. And in Carlo, the bruised heart of the story, it offers the actor Mary Wiseman, with her curly red mop piled high like a lesbian Lucy, a brilliant showcase for her split-level comic genius.I say split-level because, with Wiseman, there’s always one thing going on verbally upstairs and another going on emotionally in the basement. Sipping from an endless succession of wedding libations at some kind of barn in Northern California, her Carlo makes like a porcupine, shooting quills in the form of quips. Was not the ceremony, she gaily asks another guest, “aggressively heterosexual”? (Her ex, Eva, has married a man.) “I almost thought they were going to start checking for her hymen right there in front of us.”The lines are funny; Turner has a boxer’s sense of the two-punch rhythm of jokes. But it’s Wiseman, who first stole the spotlight as a brilliantly dim belle in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon,” who makes them hilarious by making them sad at the same time. Though focusing her ire on the wedding as a false celebration — “I’ve seen more convincing fire drills,” she says — Carlo is really gnawing at the scar of attachment itself. For those who are no good at staying in love, gift-grabs like this are worse than embarrassments; they’re torture.The sprightly, 70-minute LCT3 production, directed with wit by Jenna Worsham, gives us both of those elements right away. A gigantic, labial paper-flower chandelier hangs from the ceiling of the set, by Maruti Evans; a jaunty but ominous “Til Death” sign radiates its neon message amid Oona Curley’s string lights and lanterns. But neither the play nor the design completely endorses Carlo’s one-sided view. The eclectic playlist (sound by Fan Zhang) is exactly the kind you’d want to dance to, and the flattering costumes (by Oana Botez) are the kind you want people to dance in.It’s especially smart that Eva (Rebecca S’manga Frank) is allowed to look glorious in a truly elegant gown; she’s no comic-book bridezilla, and though we never learn exactly what happened in her relationship with Carlo, it’s evident she had good reason to end it. And if Carlo, in grief, has become an admonitory fury — Turner explicitly compares her to the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s poem, accosting wedding guests with her ghastly story — her legitimate beefs never completely obscure our view of the other partygoers as jumbles of kindness and monstrousness.The play is structured to reveal that contradiction in a series of well-acted, one-on-one encounters with Carlo. An undermine-y bridesmaid named Carly (Keren Lugo) tells her that “it wouldn’t be any failure if you decided to leave,” but later returns to comfort her. Eva’s sloshed mother, Maria (Carolyn McCormick), dismisses the R.S.V.P. gaffe but then dismisses Carlo herself. A guest named Eli (Will Rogers) confides that he intends to propose to his partner at the party, thus (as Carlo warns him) “emotionally hijacking” the festivities — which is apparently her job, not his. Yet he is far more complex than he at first seems.Rebecca S’manga Frank, left, plays Wiseman’s ex, but she is no comic-book bridezilla.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSo is Leigh (Han Van Sciver), an androgynous Lothario who uses they/them pronouns. Leigh’s flirtation with Carlo — suggesting they ditch the party for a romp somewhere else — at first seems innocent enough, even though Leigh’s brother is the groom. When that innocence is later brought into question, and the selfish side of sexual freedom surfaces, the play still refuses to disown Leigh completely.If Turner’s faith in her characters is not always returned — Maria, who gets only one scene, feels underwritten, and Leigh, despite Van Sciver’s foxy performance, never quite coheres — her faith in the audience is an entirely successful investment. Her jokes often have long lead times, the setup in one scene, the payoff in another. The plot, too, keeps well ahead of you, trusting you will survive in pleasurable uncertainty until its loose threads are eventually gathered. In one case, it takes almost 40 pages of script for a throwaway line spoken by the overburdened waiter (Jorge Donoso) to deliver its needle-prick of a reward.That authorial patience is part of what makes “At the Wedding” so fresh; though there are plenty of one-liners, it is not a yuk-yuk comedy foisting its laughs at you or over-signaling its intentions. (“Bull in a China Shop,” Turner’s professional playwriting debut, seen at LCT3 in 2017, was a bit more raucous and insistent.) Also revivifying is the way Turner reshapes the wedding genre for our time, inviting new characters to the party.She does this far too thoughtfully and skillfully for it to seem trendy or polemical. Rather, the broadening is central to the play’s examination of how our traditional ways of uniting people function in a world that has always been more diverse than its institutions.For “At the Wedding,” those institutions include more than just marriage, which many queer people can now choose if they want, in forms that, like Eva’s spectacular gown, are custom fit. They also include love itself, and the loss of it. For Carlo, and for all of us sometimes, love is the albatross strung around our necks, and the sad story we are cursed to tell ever after. It’s funny if it’s not you.At the WeddingThrough April 17 at the Claire Tow Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More