Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Derek DelGaudio and the Great Unburdening of Secrets

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDerek DelGaudio and the Great Unburdening of SecretsThe magician explains how he worked up to “In & Of Itself” in a new memoir, “Amoralman,” a prequel of sorts to the show.“I felt I was born with an absence of some sort, and I think that I’ve spent much of my life trying to fill that void,” said Derek DelGaudio, addressing a major theme in his new book.Credit…Calla Kessler for The New York TimesMarch 3, 2021If anything in Derek DelGaudio’s appearance and demeanor sets him apart, it’s that little sets him apart. Soft-spoken and presenting a beguiling, open face — one might call it “innocent” — the modern conjurer was unfailingly polite and forthcoming in a recent video interview.Yet DelGaudio, 36, spent two years scrambling audiences’ expectations, often bringing people to tears, in his Off Broadway show “In & Of Itself,” a feat anybody with a Hulu subscription can now experience via the documentary film of the same name.The most obviously attention-grabbing part of DelGaudio’s new memoir, “Amoralman” (Knopf), explores his six-month stint as a bust-out dealer (a sleight-of-hand expert hired to secretly favor specific players, i.e. a professional cheat) at an exclusive weekly poker game, when he was in his mid-20s.It’s a wildly entertaining, thriller-like set piece — yes, there is a gun — though, as with the show, it is shot through with heady existential queries. Plato’s cave, which involves illusion and manipulation, is a driving allegory in the book, which is also undergirded by the cultural thinker Jean Baudrillard’s theories of the relationship between reality and simulation.“Amoralman” now joins “The Matrix” in proving you can turn French philosophy into compelling entertainment. This places DelGaudio, who also makes up the conceptual duo A. Bandit with the artist Glenn Kaino, at a crossroads between favorites of the museum world like Marina Abramovic and hustlers with such names as Titanic Thompson.Performances of DelGaudio’s one-man show, “In & Of Itself,” were captured for a documentary that is available on Hulu.Credit…Hulu“After seeing the show, I concluded that Derek is not a magician, but not a performance artist either,” Abramovic, who is glimpsed in the Hulu film, wrote in an email. “He is on his own in a category he created himself. In some abstract way he reminds me of Marlon Brando. He establishes trust between the audience and himself, which allows emotions to get in. We are not looking at him; we are together with him.”Speaking via Zoom from his Manhattan home, DelGaudio explained that the new book is a sort of prequel to “In & Of Itself,” going back to his childhood with a lesbian mother, his discovery of magicians, swindlers and con men, and those nerve-racking poker nights. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Amoralman” is subtitled “A True Story and Other Lies,” and it features something we could call a plot twist that upends the reader’s perspective. Did those set off alarm bells with your publisher, considering the fraught history of memoirs taking liberties with facts?They were very, very uncomfortable. They said, “Have you heard of a book called ‘A Million Little Pieces’?” I hadn’t heard of that story. It’s complicated because I have a background as a magician: You think I’m going to fool you. So I use that to reveal something true that you can’t believe is true because you think that I’m here to deceive you. There’s things in the book that are so fantastical, they either couldn’t possibly be true or they could be. The answer is, they are true. But it’s the artist’s job to present them in a way that’s so fantastical, you can’t possibly believe them.Most of the time, audience members are just props in magic shows, someone to pick a card, but you go much further. How do you think of your relationship with viewers and readers?The audience are genuinely part of the equation. Despite what the movie shows, which is a very emotional arc, that was not part of it for me. I never tried to make anyone cry. I never tried to have a reaction. I just wanted to create the gestures, say the things I came to say, and let them interpret it however they want. I think that empathy is weaponized, often, especially by magicians, in a way that is not necessarily healthy or generous.A major thread in the book is your friendships with male mentors: Walter from the Colorado Springs magic shop; the virtuoso card cheat Ronnie; even Leo from the Hollywood poker games, who treats you like a son. How did they connect with your interest in magic?I felt I was born with an absence of some sort, and I think that I’ve spent much of my life trying to fill that void. That void was created by external sources: I lived in a world that told me explicitly that I’m supposed to have a father — a mother and a father. I was aware of that need to have a male influence in my life, but then there was also this feeling, a real need, to keep secrets to protect my family. So I found this very interesting world that not only was male-dominated, but it trafficked exclusively in secrets.Part of the book is about how you had to prove yourself to these guys. How tough was it?To earn my seat at their table, I had to become better than anything they had ever seen before. I felt like the kid in those samurai movies that sits on the porch for a week before he even gets led into the dojo.Do you feel the show and “Amoralman” are part of an effort to define yourself?I’ve been trying to free myself from the burden of secrets and from the burden of feeling so attached to an identity that I adopted early on in life — without even realizing that’s what I was doing — which was of a deceiver, a magician, a trickster. And trying to create work that lives up to Pierre Huyghe, Francis Alÿs, Marina with the tools that I’ve had is very, very difficult. But it’s only difficult because of perception, because of frameworks and contexts — it’s not actually the work, it’s everything around it.With the show, the film and now the book behind you, it feels as if you’re closing a chapter of your life. What are your plans?I don’t feel the need to do anything anyone’s seen me do before, and I’m excited to have that discomfort of staring into the abyss of what’s next. Maybe in 20 years I’ll reveal that I’ve been working on a show and didn’t tell you.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Making Black Lives, Not Just Black Deaths, Matter Onstage

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookMaking Black Lives, Not Just Black Deaths, Matter OnstageThe tragedy of racism is only part of the story in two very different plays from London that carry a dimension of meaning not usually seen in this country.Richard Blackwood in “Typical,” about a man who died while in police custody after a night out.Credit…Franklyn RogersPublished More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape Rooms

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape RoomsThe past year has made us rethink the boundaries between theater and film. Many of these shows are a little bit of both.From left, Vicki Lee Taylor, Tom Bales, Marc Pickering, Ryan Pidgen and Kayleigh Thadani in a musical adaptation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the Southwark Playhouse in London.Credit…Geraint LewisMarch 3, 2021It used to be easy to tell theater from film from streaming. The first was live, physical and by appointment; the others were not. But this past year has made us rethink definitions: Theater is not necessarily live or physical anymore, and film might be a little bit of both.Qui Nguyen, who is taking part in the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival. Credit…Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesIf anybody knows how to straddle the physical and virtual, it’s the playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen. On March 10, Nguyen, the author of the hit show “She Kills Monsters,” will participate in a Q. and A. for the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival — which will present over 30 pieces by theatermakers exploring new mediums. March 10-14; newohiotheatre.orgThe Young Vic in London inadvertently anticipated this change a few years ago by beginning to make digital companions to some of its shows, with crackerjack casts. Happily, they’re online for free. Directed by and starring Gillian Anderson, “The Departure” imagines Blanche DuBois in the few days before her fateful visit to Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Juliet Stevenson appears in “Mayday,” a postscript to Beckett’s “Happy Days”; while Hattie Morahan gives us a contemporary “Nora” in Carrie Cracknell and Nick Payne’s update of “A Doll’s House.” If you like Peter Brook jokes — and you well might if you are reading a column about theater — click on the dryly funny “The Roof,” whose cast includes Natalie Dormer, Noma Dumezweni, Jude Law and Ian McKellen as fans of the illustrious director. youngvic.org‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’During the past year, the Southwark Playhouse in London has emerged as a dynamic force in British theater, not letting lockdowns get in the way of new shows. After its well-received production of Philip Ridley’s “The Poltergeist,” Southwark is presenting the premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s gender-flipped — and very, very loose — musical adaptation of the Goethe poem about a young inventor (now a girl, played by Mary Moore) who gets lost in magic. Through March 14; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘To the Moon’It’s unfortunate that Kathryn Grody has a lower professional profile than her husband, Mandy Patinkin, because she is a very fine actress in her own right. Here is a chance to watch her in action through the Creede Repertory Theater, a Colorado-based company with which Grody and Patinkin have a long history. She is slated to appear in Beth Kander’s docu-play about survivors of domestic violence. Live on March 5 and 6, then on demand March 15 through April 11; creederep.orgKathleen Chalfant, the star of “The Year of Magical Thinking.”Credit…Marc Deliz‘The Year of Magical Thinking’The pandemic has seen a surge in solo shows, for obvious reasons. Joan Didion’s adaptation of her memoir was a Broadway hit in 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Now, Kathleen Chalfant tackles this haunting evocation of grief in a fund-raiser for the Keen Company. March 13-17; keencompany.orgFrom left, Saffron Coomber, Clare Perkins and Adelle Leonce in “Emilia.”Credit…Helen Murray‘Emilia’A recording of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s “chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio-play,” as The New York Times put it last year, is available again. The Olivier Award-winning comedy is set in the Elizabethan theater scene, where men played women — except here women play the men playing the women, opening up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Through March 31; emilialive.comMax Chernin, center, in “Passing Through.”Credit…Diane Sobolewski‘Passing Through’Goodspeed, a company in Connecticut, is among the greatest champions of American musicals old and new, and it has finally set up an on-demand arm to offer archival recordings of its past productions. The first is this capture of the 2019 developmental production of Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa’s show about a young man (Max Chernin) who walks from Pennsylvania to California. March 15 through April 4; goodspeed.orgTwo Playwrights Go CampingFood for Thought Productions continues its run at Theater 80 St. Marks with a double bill that should be catnip to connoisseurs of theatrical camp. The program includes the Tennessee Williams one-act comedy “Lifeboat Drill,” set on the Queen Elizabeth II, and Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” a wicked parody of “The Glass Menagerie” in which Laura becomes Lawrence, who collects glass swizzle sticks. Durang and the actress Carroll Baker are expected to turn up for a post-show Q. and A. March 8 and 13-14; foodforthoughtproductions.comPhoebe Hyder in “Dream.”Credit…Stuart Martin, via RSCInteractive ExperiencesAfter its concert of the 1930s Broadway flop “Swingin’ the Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company is involved in another experiment inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A multimedia, choose-your-own-narrative, high-concept show — in other words, it’s unclear how this will look — “Dream” is led by Puck and the Sprites and involves motion-capture technology, as well as a score including the Gestrument, an app that allows for composition through movement. March 12-20; dream.onlineThe New York-based playwright Aya Ogawa’s 2015 play “Ludic Proxy” dealt with virtual reality and incorporated polling. And now Ogawa has adapted part of it for the new “Ludic Proxy: Fukushima,” presented by the Japan Society and PlayCo, with the audience polling conducted online. Live on March 6, 7 and 11, then on-demand March 12-26; japansociety.orgBathsheba Piepe in “Plymouth Point.”Credit…Matt HassThe London Stone TrilogySwamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones (of Punchdrunk, the immersive-theater company behind “Sleep No More”) have created a tripartite project that is not so much theater as theatrical experience — think virtual escape room, but with actor Dominic Monaghan. In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media. (Full disclosure: My bumbling team put on a display of pitiful detective skills. Who would have thought watching hundreds of hours of cop shows could be so useless?) The next installments, “The Mermaid’s Tongue” and “The Kindling Hour,” will be available in the United States soon. You can already do the British versions; but they are live, so just keep the time difference in mind. plymouthpoint.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      For Many Golden Globe Winners, the London Stage Came First

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedBest and Worst MomentsWinners ListStream the WinnersRed Carpet ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookFor Many Golden Globe Winners, the London Stage Came FirstAt Sunday’s ceremony, a whole host of British winners and nominees got their training in the theater before they made it to the screen.At the Golden Globes, the actor John Boyega accepted an award for best supporting actor in a series, mini-series or television film for “Small Axe.”Credit…Christopher Polk/NBC, via ReutersMarch 2, 2021, 1:36 p.m. ETLONDON — Where would this year’s Golden Globes be without the English stage? Greatly diminished. As the winners John Boyega and Daniel Kaluuya (who took home trophies for best supporting actor in a television and movie role, respectively) and nominees like Olivia Colman and Carey Mulligan evidence, a pipeline of talent runs directly from London theater to onscreen renown at the highest levels in Hollywood.Many of the other British winners at Sunday night’s ceremony also got their training onstage. Although we may now know Emma Corrin as the latest person bold enough to embody Princess Diana, Sunday night’s 25-year-old winner for actress in a drama series accrued plenty of dramatic credits while studying at Cambridge. Her “Crown” co-star and fellow winner Josh O’Connor graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theater School before shifting his attention to the screen. He was expecting to make a high-profile return to the London stage last year in a National Theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Because of the pandemic, the production has been reimagined for the screen with a notably starry supporting cast, and will be airing in Britain and the United States next month.Josh O’Connor, who plays Prince Charles in “The Crown,” graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theater School.Credit…Alex Bailey/Netflix, via Associated PressEmma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana, accrued dramatic credits while studying at Cambridge.Credit…Des Willie/Netflix, via Associated PressMichaela Coel’s absence may have commandeered attention at this year’s Globes after her HBO show “I May Destroy You” was snubbed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but keen-eyed London playgoers will have spotted this graduate of Guildhall School at the National Theater’s now-defunct Shed theater, first in the all-female ensemble of “Blurred Lines” and then in her self-penned monologue, “Chewing Gum Dreams,” a project she began while still a student. That title was shortened and the work’s concept expanded to create “Chewing Gum,” Coel’s first TV show. Her fiery talent, first seen in embryo by London theater audiences, has now found the larger audience it deserves.On occasion, a small play itself becomes a celluloid sensation. There’s no other way to describe the leap made by “Fleabag,” which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013 and which I caught within the intimate confines of the Soho Theater in London the following year. Before long, its creator and star, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, had found a new and welcoming home for her sexually unbridled Londoner on television.An astonishing success story followed, and when Waller-Bridge returned with her character to a mainstream West End perch in 2019, there were House Full signs from its first performance onward. Before long the show’s second season had also won six Emmys, as well as a best actress Golden Globe for its creator. As a sign of quite how high her Tinseltown star has risen, Waller-Bridge was brought on with much fanfare to work on the script of the upcoming Bond film “No Time to Die.”Phoebe Waller-Bridge received a Golden Globe award in 2020 for her work on “Fleabag.”Credit…Paul Drinkwater/NBC, via Associated PressIndeed, scratch most British TV and film names and you’ll find a theater-trained talent, most of whom are happy to return to the stage and regularly do: Ralph Fiennes, a movie star by anyone’s definition, was quick to brave the London stage last year during the brief mid-pandemic window when theaters here were open. His chosen vehicle was David Hare’s solo play, “Beat the Devil,” appearing as the playwright himself.Fiennes graduated, as have many well-known actors here, from the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The widely shared belief, at least in Britain, is that some sort of stage training sets you up for a profession that demands versatility and flexibility (not to mention technique), all of which are surely useful onscreen as well as onstage. Nor can one deny that theater training here has long seemed like a rite of passage, conferring legitimacy on those who submit to the rigors of the stage.Not everyone follows this path: I’ve yet to see yet another of Sunday’s Globe recipients, Sacha Baron Cohen, on a London stage, though that prospect is hugely enticing, and such actors as Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet seem to have leapt to onscreen stardom without paying this country’s seemingly obligatory dues onstage. (Winslet has done theater in the regions but not in London.)Awards Season More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Glimmerglass Festival to Stage Its Operas Outdoors This Summer

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGlimmerglass Festival to Stage Its Operas Outdoors This SummerThe festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., plans to resume performances this summer in “the most ventilated area we could find: the great outdoors.”A rendering of the stage that will be built for summer. The lawn will be transformed into socially distanced areas for four to six people.Credit…via GlimmerglassMarch 1, 2021Updated 7:18 p.m. ETWith many performing arts organizations trying to determine when it will be safe to return to their theaters, the Glimmerglass Festival announced Monday that it would take advantage of its bucolic surroundings in upstate New York to build an outdoor stage so it can perform this summer for socially-distanced audiences on its lawn.The festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., about 200 miles from New York City, was determined to make a comeback this summer after the coronavirus forced the cancellation of its 2020 season. So it will move performances out of its usual theater, the Alice Busch Opera Theater, to an outdoor stage, and will divide its rolling lawns into socially distanced areas that can fit up to four people with chairs and blankets. Covered booths will also be offered that can fit up to six. “We invite you to join us this summer for a socially distanced festival where you will experience reimagined operas in the most ventilated area we could find: the great outdoors,” Francesca Zambello, the festival’s general and artistic director, said in a video presentation.Festival leaders made the choice to move outdoors from its intimate 915-seat theater “primarily for the health and safety of our company members, audience members and community,” Ms. Zambello said. The stage will be built on the south side of its grounds. The open-air performances will not be the only thing different about this summer’s festival, which is scheduled to run from July 15 to Aug. 17. The company said it would shorten its operas to 90 minutes for the safety of its audiences — avoiding the need for intermissions when people would mingle — and to build on the success it had with an abbreviated work in 2019, when it presented a 90-minute adaptation of “The Queen of Spades,” which combined elements of Tchaikovsky’s score and the Pushkin story. Among this summer’s operas will be shortened versions of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Offenbach’s “Songbird (La Périchole).” The festival has lined up several opera stars for its summer’s offerings, including the bass-baritone Eric Owens and the mezzo-sopranos Isabel Leonard and Denyce Graves. The company will also mark the beginning of a three-year initiative this season called “Common Ground” that would unveil six new pieces that show an audience stories of life in America. As part of the initiative, the festival will offer two new pieces, a dance called “On Trac| More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Kafka Meets Twitch in ‘Letter to My Father’

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReview: Kafka Meets Twitch in ‘Letter to My Father’Audience members can shift from camera to camera in this streaming solo show, like security guards keeping watch.Michael Guagno in “Letter to My Father.”Credit…Eileen MenyFeb. 28, 2021Theater instructions used to be simple: Turn off your cellphone and unwrap your candy before the show starts. Now the M-34 company, based in Brooklyn, is recommending that audience members watch a YouTube tutorial before tuning in to its production of Franz Kafka’s “Letter to My Father.”In that short video, you learn that the play uses a multistream interface, which, in effect, means you are like one of those security guards toggling among various surveillance-camera views. There are three basic options — KafkaTV1, 2 and 3 — offering different perspectives on the action. This might be overkill since most of said action consists of the actor Michael Guagno reading Kafka’s text while sitting at a desk in what looks like a small office space, the wall shelves crammed with file boxes. (The many other offerings livestreaming on Twitch at the same time on Friday included the YouTuber Quackity playing games in front of at least 184,000 people; alas, the M-34 show drew far fewer viewers.)The director James Rutherford, who developed the show with Guagno, tries hard to spice up the proceedings. First, there are those multiple camera feeds, whose tiles you can rearrange on your screen — though I found myself prioritizing the one with the most straightforward view of Guagno, as if unconsciously trying to recreate the experience of watching a stage.Then there are flourishes of physical staging. The actor, for example, starts off in a tank top and spends the first several minutes silently picking up a mess of fallen papers from the floor. He then puts on a suit and proceeds to read the script, which consists of a long, anguished, angry letter from Kafka to his father and tormentor.Guagno spends the first several minutes silently picking up a mess of fallen papers from the floor.Credit…Eileen MenyKafka, the author of “The Metamorphosis,” wrote his missive (published in English as “Letter to His Father”) in 1919, when he was 36, but did not send it. Which is just as well, because it is unlikely that the letter would have prompted any kind of reckoning from Hermann Kafka: Not only was he an abusive despot, but according to a biographical note on the Franz Kafka Museum’s site, he and his son “had contrasting attitudes to life, family, marriage, employment and other people” — in other words, everything.Guagno barrels through the dense diatribe, which makes it clear that Hermann has taken permanent residence in his now-adult son’s head: “Your threat, ‘Not a word in contradiction!’ together with the image of your raised hand, has haunted me ever since I can remember,” Franz writes.Despite being a repetitive, off-putting screed, Kafka’s text is not a stranger to the stage, and it has even been turned into an opera. This is even the second go-round for Rutherford and Guagno, who presented another high-tech, conceptual production in Brooklyn in 2012.The new show is fancy and looks sleek, but it is unclear what the staging is trying to convey. The office space may be a nod to Kafka’s own day job at an insurance company, and the surveillance visuals might suggest … well, it’s hard to say what, since this aesthetic has become banal by now, but let’s go with our modern world’s insistence on radically altering the very meaning of privacy.Or Guagno’s juggling reams of paper, surrounded by boxes that probably contain more of the same, might suggest the endlessly dull grind of life. Curiously, watching him feels just as distanced and disconnected as watching Quackity’s inane antics, just a tab away — the closest Kafka may come to YouTube celebrity.Franz Kafka’s Letter to My FatherThrough March 28; m-34.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Is Dark. London Is Quiet. But in Australia, It’s Showtime.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAt the Capital Theater in Sydney, easing pandemic restrictions have allowed for performances of the musical “Frozen.” “It’s great to be out,” one audience member said.Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York TimesBroadway Is Dark. London Is Quiet. But in Australia, It’s Showtime.Temperature-taking robots, scanning codes for contact tracing, and generous refund policies are helping shows like “Frozen,” “Come From Away” and “Hamilton” get back onstage.At the Capital Theater in Sydney, easing pandemic restrictions have allowed for performances of the musical “Frozen.” “It’s great to be out,” one audience member said.Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDamien Cave and Published More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      ‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the Corpses

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the CorpsesBill Camp stars in JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny streaming production of this Samuel Beckett short story.Bill Camp plays a grizzled disaster of a man in “First Love,” a Theater for a New Audience production. Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANAFeb. 26, 2021, 5:28 p.m. ETPlenty of people enjoy a stroll through a cemetery, even a picnic among the tombstones. A bit of communing with the dead or meditating on mortality: nothing amiss about that.The narrator of Samuel Beckett’s short story “First Love,” though, has other ideas about the pleasures of the graveyard — like lucking upon “a genuine interment, with real live mourners,” or having loads of spots to choose from when he feels the urge to relieve himself.This hard-core eccentric, embodied by Bill Camp, is at his most comically unsettling when he speaks of “the smell of corpses,” and takes a long, savoring sniff.“Humans are truly strange,” he observes a while later in the monologue, by which point we can hardly disagree.In JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny, dun-colored streaming production for Theater for a New Audience, this grizzled disaster of a man is the kind of weird that makes you lean in to watch.“If theaters opened up tomorrow,” Akalaitis says in a program note, “I wouldn’t do this: This piece is made for Zoom.”So Eamonn Farrell’s unadorned video design frames a small upstairs space in Camp’s house. Jennifer Tipton’s stark, shadowy lighting sands down the edges of time, while Kaye Voyce’s costume design — principally a headlamp and sweater vest — suggests an untended aloneness. (Akalaitis has collaborated on Beckett with Camp, Tipton and Voyce before.)The costume designer Kaye Voyce put Camp in a headlamp and sweater vest.Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANABeckett wrote “First Love” in 1946, the year he turned 40, though he didn’t allow its publication until the 1970s. Its nameless narrator is recollecting his mid-20s, when, shortly after his father’s death, he was summarily chucked out of the family home — a rude jolt, as he’d expected “to be left the room I had occupied in his lifetime and for food to be brought me there, as hitherto.”That reeking entitlement is perhaps his main attribute when he enters what he calls his marriage: a relationship involving initial obsession yet no love on his part.But let’s guess, shall we, that he was devastatingly good-looking then, or especially gifted at sex. Otherwise it is difficult to comprehend why the woman he variously calls Lulu or Anna ever took this tenaciously lazy creature home and waited on him there.He doesn’t have the existential weariness that we associate with Beckett characters; rather, Camp gives him a pouncing intensity. Still, his greatest exertion by far is the impulsive emptying, for his own use, of one of Lulu/Anna’s rooms — a manic scene that Camp enacts with a pile of dollhouse-size furniture.What our narrator keenly, even cruelly, wants is to be left with his thoughts. If he gets mired in them, and he will, that’s OK with him. Just as long as the world does not intrude.First LoveThrough March 1; tfana.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More