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    Solo Shows in Theater This Fall: Patrick Page, Isabelle Adjani and More

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    For theatergoers who love uncrowded stages, the coming months bring a range of works, from musical comedies to Shakespearean dramas.Solo shows have been around as long as there has been theater — longer, actually, if we count storytelling by a campfire. There is an elemental intimacy about the format and, let’s face it, an economic appeal at a time of belt-tightening.Despite their seemingly restrictive approach, one-person productions come in many shapes and forms: tales told by a single narrator and ones in which the performer embodies many characters, for example; dramatic yarns; and comic efforts that can flirt with stand-up. The last hybrid seems to be enjoying a kind of golden age, illustrated by the successes of Mike Birbiglia (“The Old Man and the Pool”) and Alex Edelman, whose recent Broadway hit, “Just for Us,” will be at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, Oct. 26-28.The coming months are a boon for theatergoers who love uncrowded stages, starting with the fall iteration of the cornucopia known as the United Solo Theater Festival (through Nov. 19 at Theater Row). Here is a selection of notable shows.Interrogating biographySometimes, it takes one icon to take measure of to another. The French actress Isabelle Adjani (“The Story of Adèle H.,” “Camille Claudel”) engages with Marilyn Monroe, myth and woman, in “Marilyn’s Vertigo.” The show, presented in French with supertitles as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, is framed as a dialogue with the Hollywood star, and was written by Adjani and Olivier Steiner. Oct. 12-13; FIAF Florence Gould Hall, Manhattan.John Rubinstein in Richard Hellesen’s “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” adapted from Eisenhower’s memoirs, speeches and letters.Maria BaranovaIn a different register, John Rubinstein returns for an encore of Richard Hellesen’s “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” a dive into the life of the military leader-turned-president that has proved quite popular. Through Oct. 27; Theater at St. Clement’s, Manhattan.One’s a crowdThe formidable Patrick Page is a versatile actor, but let’s face it: He is best known for portraying antagonists, including the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and Hades in “Hadestown.” Maybe it’s his basso profundo voice? In “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” directed by Simon Godwin, Page — whose command of his craft our critic described as “stupefying, effortless” — scrutinizes those classic characters. This might be the only time we ever see his take on Lady Macbeth. Through Jan. 7; DR2 Theater, Manhattan.Following his acclaimed solos “The Man in the Woman’s Shoes” (2015) and “I Hear You and Rejoice” (2018), the Irish writer and actor Mikel Murfi is bringing to New York the trilogy’s conclusion, “The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey.” Murfi portrays a range of characters from County Sligo, and performs all three pieces in repertory. Audiences can see any of the shows, or all of them. Oct. 24-Nov. 18; Irish Arts Center, Manhattan.Lameece Issaq has written for ensembles in works like “Food and Fadwa,” but her new piece, “A Good Day to Me, Not to You,” is a solo. In the show, presented by the Waterwell company and directed by Lee Sunday Evans (“Oratorio for Living Things”), Issaq plays a 40-something former dental lab technician reconsidering her life as she moves into a rooming house run by nuns on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Nov. 8-Dec. 9; Connelly Theater, Manhattan.Stand-up or theater?The comedian Caitlin Cook returns to SoHo Playhouse with her show “The Writing on the Stall.”Mindy TuckerGabe Mollica and Caitlin Cook are usually called comedians, but their work blurs the line with theater. Both performers are returning to the stage with encore runs of pieces that have been building a buzz. In “Solo: A Show About Friendship,” Mollica explores his realization that he has buddies but no close friends, and tries to dig into the reasons for that. Our ideas and hangups about masculinity may well play a part. Oct. 10-28, Connelly Theater Upstairs, Manhattan.Cook’s “The Writing on the Stall” is inspired by the gold mine of comic material found on the walls of bar bathrooms. She has turned graffiti spotted over the years into a show integrating songs (a nice micro-trend among comedians; see also Catherine Cohen), bits of anthropology and autobiographical sharing. Oct. 16-17, SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan.Birth of a performerEdgar Oliver, a longtime fixture of the downtown New York theater scene, revisits his days at the Pyramid Club in his new work, “Rip Tide.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFour years ago, Ben Brantley described Edgar Oliver’s body of work as a “singular series of elegiac performance pieces,” which essentially amount to an oral history narrated by one person. Oliver’s new piece, “Rip Tide,” revisits his days performing at the Pyramid Club, the East Village boîte where renegade drag, rock, spoken word and performance art thrived in the 1980s and ’90s. Through Oct. 28; Axis Theater, Manhattan.In her review for The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes pointed out how Melissa Etheridge turns Circle in the Square into an intimate music club for her concert-cum-memoir show, “My Window,” now on Broadway. Some of the rocker’s most fun anecdotes cover her early years playing lesbian spaces from her native Kansas to California. Through Nov. 19, Circle in the Square, Manhattan.Table for how many?Geoff Sobelle most recently performed his dinner party as theater spectacle at the Edinburgh Festival.Iain MastertonTechnically speaking, Geoff Sobelle’s “Food,” which is part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, involves a lot of people. Sobelle (“The Object Lesson”) is the host of a dinner party at which audience members sit at a very large table for what is described as “a meditation on how and why we eat.” Since “Food” was created with the magician Steve Cuiffo (“A Simulacrum”), it is no spoiler to mention it involves entertaining trickery. Nov. 2-18, Brooklyn Academy of Music.Repertory of onesPlaywrights Horizons is making smart use of its space by presenting three solos in repertory. Drawing from years as a tutor, Milo Cramer wrote and performs in “School Pictures,” a play with music that looks at our education system via a range of New York students. The comedian Ikechukwu Ufomadu, who opened for Catherine Cohen at Joe’s Pub this summer, brings more of his surreal musings in “Amusements.” And Alexandra Tatarsky’s “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” which involves clowning and nudity, looks to be the wild card of this bunch — emphasis on wild. Nov. 2-Dec. 3, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan. More

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      ‘Worlds Fair Inn’ Review: You Can Check Out Anytime You Like

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      A lurid story about the serial killer H.H. Holmes gets an absurdist spin at the Axis Theater Company.What have we learned from all of those dark nights, and will anything have changed now that the lights are coming on again? These are the definitive questions of this odd moment, as theater begins its piecemeal reopening. “Worlds Fair Inn,” a new play at Axis Theater Company, offers one deflating response: nothing.At first, of course, a few differences manifest. Like the temperature check at the ticket taker’s table or the spacing between the seats in Axis’s dim, subterranean space. But “Worlds Fair Inn,” a neo-Gothic frippery that runs a brief but somehow labored 50 minutes, could have played at any time in the past two decades since Axis opened its doors.Written and directed by Randy Sharp, the artistic director of Axis, the piece takes obvious inspiration from the exploits of the serial killer H.H. Holmes, who carried out his murders in a building colloquially known as the World’s Fair Hotel. (Some of the victims were attendees of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.) The program mentions that the show is equally indebted to the exploits of the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. That part doesn’t come through.Sharp gives Holmes’s lurid story an absurdist spin. Three men, dressed like punk-rock versions of Buster Keaton, meet on a stage crowded with whiskey bottles. One of them, Frank (Brian Barnhart), announces a plan to build a hotel to house fair attendees. The other two (George Demas and Jon McCormick) sign on as builders and accomplices. Eventually they lure a man and a woman (Edgar Oliver and Britt Genelin) to the check-in desk, murdering them and then mutilating and reanimating their corpses.Despite its historical sources, the show gives little sense of time or place — or plot or character, for that matter. The dialogue bumbles, though there are a few odd felicities, like Frank’s habit of pronouncing “fair” as “fire” and a lone, lame joke. “So you would do whatever I say even if it goes against your beliefs as a human being?” Frank asks his new colleagues. “I’m a contractor,” one says, by way of assent.This play, like many of Axis’s productions, mostly serves as a pretext for David Zeffren’s tenebrous lighting and Paul Carbonara’s ominous sound design. Though the show concerns interior spaces, “Worlds Fair Inn” never gestures to how long many of us spent inside over the past year. And those of us who want a theater that believes in diversity and equity are likely to find the show’s seemingly all-white cast discouraging. While it feels like a miracle to be allowed sit down in a theater again, program in hand and live actors onstage, that wonder ebbs.Still, what a treat to spend a little time with Oliver. He is an absolutely sui generis actor who resembles nothing so much as an Edgar Allan Poe short story made flesh. (If it matters, I once rode the B67 bus with him and his offstage manner is equally, wonderfully sepulchral.)His character isn’t onstage for very long, though the moments passed with him provide their own peculiar pleasure. Even as we hope that theater will return much more engaged and brave and dynamic and diverse, how nice to see a strange and familiar face.Worlds Fair InnThrough June 19 at the Axis Theater, Manhattan; axiscompany.org. More