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      ‘Cat Kid Comic Club’ Review: Tiny, Big Imaginations

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      In a musical based on works by the creator of Captain Underpants, an anthropomorphic feline urges young swamp dwellers (and the polliwogs in the audience) to let their creativity run wild.“Oppenheimer” isn’t the summer’s only work of popular culture in which atomic bombs detonate. The other such production, however, draws laughter and aims for an audience that probably worries more about long division than about nuclear fission.That show is TheaterWorksUSA’s “Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical,” which opened on Sunday at the Lucille Lortel Theater. This family-oriented romp, set in a swamp “right this minute,” features obstreperous tadpoles, a bionic butterflyfish and a sweet-natured feline hero — all characters that spring from the imagination of Dav Pilkey, the delightfully subversive author of such best-selling children’s graphic-novel series as Captain Underpants and Dog Man. Now the writer and lyricist Kevin Del Aguila, who’s also an actor in “Some Like It Hot,” and the composer Brad Alexander, who in 2019 winningly adapted the Dog Man books for TheaterWorksUSA, have returned to bring Pilkey’s Cat Kid Comic Club series to the stage.The new production begins as the tadpoles, who have been endowed with telekinetic powers, are destroying civilization, but soon morphs into a humorous tale of redemption. Cat Kid (Sonia Roman), a feline friend to all the swamp’s residents, has an antidote to the evil force controlling the polliwogs, and Flippy the fish (Jamie LaVerdiere) adopts them. But when they still prove to be disciplinary challenges, Cat Kid starts the club in the musical’s title, hoping that teaching the tiny frogs to create comics will help tame their behavior.Drawing comics certainly helped Pilkey, who has written about his early attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But just as his irreverent novels dismay some adults, the tadpoles produce comics — all acted out hilariously onstage — that horrify their adoptive father.Curly (Brian Owen) delivers one in which a failed baby superhero inadvertently causes nukes to explode, ending the world. And Poppy (L.R. Davidson) draws “The Cute, Little, Fluffy Cloud of Death,” whose lonely, lisping title character finds friendship with a ghost girl and her skeleton dog. (Emmarose Campbell created the dog; AchesonWalsh Studios did the other ingenious puppets that augment the nimble human cast, and Cameron Anderson designed the inventive set.)Now, parents who think gallows humor is inappropriate for the young may not buy tickets to “Cat Kid.” But they would be depriving their children of not only the wit of the musical’s book and the inventiveness of its numbers — they range from Bon Jovi-esque power ballads to bluegrass to rap — but also of its serious import.In addition to urging its audience to be fearlessly imaginative, the show promotes equity for girls in a subplot involving the combative tadpole Naomi (Markia Nicole Smith) and her smug brother, Melvin (Dan Rosales). The action reveals that Naomi’s prickliness derives partly from having to work harder for the rewards that boys like Melvin take for granted.But the musical, deftly directed and choreographed by Marlo Hunter, also endorses a more global inclusiveness. At one point, Cat Kid announces a lesson on perspective, which led a little boy at the performance I attended to whisper, “What’s perspective?”The show answers by demonstrating how the concept plays a role in society as well as in art. At a time when some communities are banning certain children’s books — Pilkey’s included — “Cat Kid” emphasizes the value of learning about diverse points of view and encouraging creativity in young people. And if what they create makes their parents uncomfortable? It’s not the end of the world.Cat Kid Comic ClubThrough Aug. 27 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; twusa.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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      ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’ Review: Wielding His Trusty Kitchen Tools

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      With a 17th-century grocer as its hero, Red Bull Theater and Fiasco stage a 400-year-old comedy that’s both a satire of the theater and a valentine to it.When did audience members become so wanton and disorderly? Since theaters reopened a year and a half ago, reports of fights, vomiting, public urination, public sex, and the verbal and physical abuse of staff have proliferated. Early in April, police were called to a theater in Britain hosting “The Bodyguard,” because some ticket holders wouldn’t stop singing along, precipitating a near riot. And on Monday night, at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village, a grocer and his wife stormed the stage — well, maybe she didn’t storm so much as prance on up — to demand that the company revise its show and hire their apprentice, too. Is there an usher in the house?Of course, this particular disruption was planned more than 400 years ago. It’s right there in the script of Francis Beaumont’s “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” a tricksy, loopy, wildly self-referential 1607 play that parodies both city comedy and chivalric romance. Excepting the uptown revival of “Camelot,” these aren’t genres with a lot of currency. But Red Bull Theater and Fiasco, the co-creators of this revival, don’t seem overly concerned. Keep the jokes popping, keep the songs coming, the directors Noah Brody and Emily Young seem to believe, and the contemporaneity will take care of itself.When the play begins, a troupe of actors, costumed in skirts and breeches that gesture toward the Elizabethan, are about to put on a new show, “The London Merchant.” George (Darius Pierce) interrupts them. He doesn’t think that local business owners have been represented fairly by the theater. With the help of his wife, Nell (Jesse Austrian, a Fiasco founder and a cherry bomb of comedy), he forces them to remake the piece with a grocer as its hero. So Rafe (Paco Tolson) is transformed into the Knight of the Burning Pestle, a cavalier with a colander for a helmet and a pestle for a sword.The problem with topical comedy, even backward-looking topical comedy like this, is that the references don’t always survive. That’s true enough here. What’s also true is that the play within the play — the story of a merchant, a daughter, the daughter’s lover — isn’t so engrossing. It also includes a scene in which the lover, Jasper (Devin E. Haqq) threatens to murder the daughter, Luce (Teresa Avia Lim), in order to test her devotion. It’s a frightening moment and categorically abusive. The comedy can’t contain it.But the adventures of the knight and his horse (Royer Bockus) and squire (Ben Steinfeld) are beautifully silly. The interruptions of the grocer and his wife are better still, especially when Nell is pulled onstage to play a pan-Slavic princess who talks like Dracula. Best of all, though, is the Fiasco mien, which favors a giddy, affable, let’s-put-on-a-show quality. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves (Steinfeld, who sings most of his lines, often accompanied by Bockus and the actor and multi-instrumentalist Paul L. Coffey, even more than the rest). And their performances carry with them a swaggering sense of rehearsal room experimentation and delight. They seem to be performing for the sheer pleasure of it, with the audience a welcome afterthought.This probably explains their attraction to “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” however antiquated and rickety. It’s a satire of theater that is also a valentine to it, to the transport of becoming swept up into a play, to the wonder of seeing someone just like you onstage. Or as in the case of Nell, playing a part yourself. It’s an invitation to all of us: To put on our colanders, take up our kitchen implements and give ourselves over to make-believe.The Knight of the Burning PestleThrough May 13 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; redbulltheater.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      A24, the Indie Film Studio, Buys New York’s Cherry Lane Theater

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      The studio’s first venture into live performance follows the move by Audible, Amazon’s audio subsidiary, to stage works at the nearby Minetta Lane Theater.A24, the independent film and television studio barreling into next weekend’s Academy Awards with a boatload of Oscar nominations, is making an unexpected move into live performance, purchasing a small Off Broadway theater in New York’s West Village.The studio, which until now has focused on making movies, television shows and podcasts, has purchased the Cherry Lane Theater for $10 million, and plans to present plays as well as other forms of live entertainment there, in addition to the occasional film screening.A24, whose films include the leading Oscar contender “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” is not the first film studio to make such a move: the Walt Disney Company has been presenting stage productions at Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater, which it leases from the state and city, since 1997. But Disney, of course, is an entertainment industry behemoth that has mastered the art of multiplatform storytelling.A more comparable move, perhaps, was that by Audible, an Amazon audio subsidiary that since 2018 has been leasing the Minetta Lane Theater, in Greenwich Village, for live productions which it then records and offers on its digital platform. And Netflix, the streaming juggernaut, has in recent years taken over several cinemas, including the Paris Theater in New York, as well as the Egyptian and Bay theaters in Los Angeles.The A24 acquisition, coming at a time when many theaters are still struggling to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, suggests a vote of confidence in live performance. A24 plans to present some events celebrating Cherry Lane’s centennial this spring, and then to close the theater for renovations before beginning full-scale programming next year.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Much remains uncertain about how the company intends to use the theater. A24 declined to make anyone available to speak on the record about the acquisition, but an official there said that the company had not yet decided whether it would develop work for the stage, or present work developed by others. The official, who was granted anonymity to describe the company’s plans, said that the studio hoped the theater would allow it to strengthen existing relationships with writers and performers who work on stage and screen, and to develop new relationships with comedians and theater artists.A24 plans to retain the theater’s existing staff while adding to it with its own team, the official said, and as part of the renovation it plans to install technology so the theater can be used for film screenings.The official said A24’s theater venture is a partnership with Taurus Investment Holdings.“I really believe my theater is going into the right hands,” said Angelina Fiordellisi, who has owned the theater since 1996. “They love to develop and produce the work of emerging writers, and a lot of their writers are playwrights. I can’t imagine a better way to bring future life to the theater.”Fiordellisi, 68, has been trying to sell the theater for some time. “I don’t want to work that hard anymore,” she said, “and I want to spend more time with my family.”The purchase, which was previously reported by Curbed, includes three attached properties, including a 179-seat theater, a 60-seat theater and eight apartments, on the Village’s picturesque, curving Commerce Street. The Cherry Lane, in a 19th-century building that was a brewery and a box factory before being converted to theatrical use in 1923, bills itself as the city’s longest continually running Off Broadway theater.In 2021, Fiordellisi agreed to sell the property to the Lucille Lortel Theater for $11 million, but the sale fell apart. Last week, Lortel announced that it had spent $5.3 million to purchase a three-story carriage house in Chelsea, where it plans to open a 61-seat theater in 2025. The Lortel organization also has a 295-seat theater in the West Village.The Cherry Lane will now be a for-profit, commercial venture; Fiordellisi had operated it through a nonprofit, occasionally presenting work that she developed and more often renting it to nonprofit and commercial producers. Fiordellisi said she will convert her nonprofit to a foundation that will give grants to playwrights and small theater companies. More

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      ‘Small Talk’ Review: The Art of Meaningless Banter

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      In his brisk, low-maintenance Off Broadway show, the workhorse comic Colin Quinn extols the virtues of idle chitchat.After creating solo shows on the American constitution (“Unconstitutional”), the looming civil war (“Red State Blue State”) and the history of the world (“Long Story Short”), the workhorse comic Colin Quinn has decided to take on a subject of real consequence: small talk.It’s not as sharp of a pivot as you might think. Small talk is dismissed as shallow, but I was persuaded by Ruth Graham’s defense of it in Slate as a social glue in an increasingly divided world, or as she puts it, the “solid ground of shared culture.” Quinn clearly believes this, too. Whether you agree or not, there is little doubt we are currently facing a chitchat crisis. As Quinn deadpans in “Small Talk,” a brisk mix of charming comedy, thin history, self-help guide and various digressions that runs through Feb. 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, “Between phones, air pods and self-checkout, small talk is down 87 percent.”That doesn’t even account for the isolation of the pandemic that made us all rusty at saying hello to neighbors and jawing about the weather. Meaningless banter, a subgenre of small talk according to Quinn, is its own art. Ease into conversations, and don’t be abrupt, Quinn advises; he also suggests beginning with an exhale and “whoo.” Dressed casually in button-down shirt and sneakers, Quinn is big on the virtue of long vowel sounds. He also likes nicknames, nodding and starting conversations with “Is it me, or …”Part of his take on America is that while we may not be the most astute, we are the country with the best, or at least the most, personality, an empire built on charm, talk and salesmanship. This is why the decline of small talk matters. Quinn has no time for the idea it’s inauthentic. Its fakery is part of the appeal. Small talk has rules, and following them is more important than being your true self. Like improv, you need to listen and agree. Unlike improv, never escalate.This might be where Quinn runs into problems, because after a promising start, he can’t help but move outside the lines of his framework to ride hobby horses. He digs into social media, how the left and right are their own cults and the distorting dangers of technology. It’s almost as if he doesn’t believe small talk is big enough.Quinn has always been a wandering performer, with an intuitive grasp of openings and closers, but structurally messy in between. James Fauvell directs this piece with a light hand, and the production, on a bare stage, has a stripped-down aesthetic of a comedy club.Quinn once sarcastically mocked those who tell comics to evolve with the times. But he’s done just that, moving from game show hosting to political chat (“Tough Crowd”) to “Saturday Night Live” to Twitter. He has now settled into an essential part of the Off Broadway landscape, adding a much-needed bounty of jokes to the regular theatrical menu. His material doesn’t tend to be personal, though you see hints of a shift in the end of this show, when he movingly brings up Norm Macdonald, whom Quinn rightly describes as a “master small talker,” and briefly mentions a heart attack he suffered a few years ago that nearly killed him. He’s not one to get sentimental (is it me or does that kill small talk?), but, like his last solo show, he ends by imagining how people will look back on us as a civilization when we’re gone.He also speculates that if our country ended tomorrow, our epitaph might sound like something on a Myrtle Beach T-shirt: “America: If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.”It’s a reminder that while Quinn favored sweeping ambitious subjects, his real gift, and greatest comic subject, is the comedy of language: clichés, slogans, slang. Is this stuff small? It depends on how you look at it.Small TalkThrough Feb. 11 at Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; colinquinnshow.com. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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      Historic Cherry Lane Theater Sold for $11 Million

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      The Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which has managed the 97-year-old theater for the past decade, will take over the building in Greenwich Village.The Cherry Lane Theater, the oldest continuously running Off Broadway theater in New York City, has been sold to the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation for $11 million, the theater announced on Monday.“It has been a great run,” Angelina Fiordellisi, the executive director of the theater, said in a statement. “To stand on the stage where so many of our greatest artists, crews and theater providers have stood is to know what theater history feels like.”The new owner will be the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which is a few blocks from the Cherry Lane Theater on Christopher Street and has managed the building for the past decade. The sale includes the 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio theater.Fiordellisi, who has led the 97-year-old nonprofit theater since acquiring the building in 1996, will continue to lead the nonprofit producing group Cherry Lane Alternative, which will have readings — and possibly productions — in the theater’s studio space.She had previously announced plans to sell the building, at 38 Commerce Street, in 2010, citing financial struggles. At the time, she told The New York Times that the theater was operating at a deficit of $250,000, which she attributed to a steep drop in income from government and foundation support, ticket sales and rental fees.“It’s frightening to me, what’s happened to Off Broadway theater,” Fiordellisi told The Times in 2010. “We have to adhere to the formula of having a film star in our productions to sell tickets because it’s so financially prohibitive. I don’t want to do theater like that.”But eight months later, she reversed her decision because of a significantly reduced deficit, a new managing agent and the support of the theater’s neighbors. Cherry Lane Alternative, the resident theater company Fiordellisi established in 1997, currently has a deficit of $100,000, a spokesman for the theater, Sam Rudy, said.The theater, a Greenwich Village institution that has long been a testing ground for new work by emerging artists, reopened at full capacity last month with Jacqueline Novak’s “Get on Your Knees,” a comedy that offers a personal and intellectual history of oral sex. It is scheduled to run through July 31.Under Fiordellisi, Cherry Lane has mentored writers including Katori Hall, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “The Hot Wing King”; Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whose play “Pass Over” will begin previews on Broadway in August after being produced at the theater in 2016; and Jocelyn Bioh, whose “Merry Wives,” a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” is running at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Cherry Lane was started by a group of artists who were colleagues of Edna St. Vincent Millay and has showcased work by Samuel Beckett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. But despite its storied history, the theater had not staged a play in two years when Fiordellisi bought it for $1.7 million in 1996 and renovated it for $3 million.Cherry Lane Alternative, the nonprofit producing group, said it expects to resume a scaled-back version of its acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs emerging writers with established playwrights like Lynn Nottage, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Taylor Mac to develop and stage their work in the studio theater space. It will likely include one production per season instead of the typical three.George Forbes, the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation’s executive director, said the foundation plans to announce new programming shortly. More