Got shaken & stirred under the theater’s dark lights this weekend. Privileged to see the Steve Reich Evening at BAM, in collaboration with the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Reich isn’t for everyone: subtle tonal graduations emerge from his rich rhythms almost imperceptively, requiring a meditative frame of patience to reap listening rewards. For me it was just what the doctor ordered, as was De Keersmaeker’s lovely work, though it took the evening for the dance to coalesce; it finally did, powerfully accompanied by Reich’s Drumming—Part 1.
And there was the compelling, if imperfect Fifty Words at the Lucille Lortel on Christopher Street. Written by Michael Weller (Moonchildren, the film adaptation of Ragtime), it’s a marriage-at-the-crossroads tale, as a couple confronts their cumulative shit aided by their child’s absence and a few glasses of vino; its head-scorching recriminations and honesty elicited chuckles (and gasps) of recognition from the audience—a house full of relationship vets no doubt. The play sputters out unsatisfactorily at the end, but as navigated by the fine Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel, this domestic long night’s journey is brutally thought-provoking. You certainly won’t doze. A production of MCC, it runs until November 8.
Photo of Butz and Marvel, courtesy of Sara Krulwich, NYT