the new yorker - 8 june 2015

8/8/2019 The New Yorker - 8 June 2015

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JUNE 8 & 15, 2015PRICE $8.99


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3/118THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2015 1

9 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

31 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson on a journalist’s trial in Iran;

Harper Lee; the Grateful Dead; Elise Engler; James Surowiecki on the big bubble in China.

Zadie Smith 38 “ESCAPEFROMNEWYORK”

Jonathan SafrAn Foer 45 “LOVE ISBLINDANDDEAF”

Anthony Lane 48 GOASKALICE

Lewis Carroll and Wonderland.

Primo Levi 56 “QUAESTIODECENTAURIS”

Jonathan Franzen 62 “THEREPUBLICOFBADTASTE”

NIcola lo Calzo 84 EXILES

A portfolio.

Karen Russell 90 “THE PROSPECTORS”

TIME TRAVEL

LOUISE ERDRICH 46 THECOURSEOFHAPPINESS

DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN 55 LOSTLUGGAGE

REBECCA CURTIS 61 MORLOCKSANDELOI

THOMAS MCGUANE 69 FALLRIVER

SAM LIPSYTE 83 PACKAGETOUR

THE CRITICSPOLITICSANDLITERATURERobyn Creswell and 102 Understanding jihadis through their poetry.

Bernard Haykel

BOOKS

109 Briefly Noted

ONTELEVISION

Emily Nussbaum 110 “Cucumber,” “Banana.”

THECURRENTCINEMA

Anthony Lane 112 “Love & Mercy,” “San Andreas.”

Continued on page 2

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S E CR E I S T I


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POEMS BENJAMIN LANDRY 42 “African Grey” Adam fitzgerald 72 “The Lordly Hudson”

christoph niemann COVER“Summer Sky”

DRAWINGS Christopher Weyant, Roz Chast, Michael Maslin, Jacob Samuel, Sam Gross,P. C. Vey, Benjamin Schwartz, William Haefeli, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Edward Steed, Tom Cheney,

Paul Noth, Corey Pandolph, Liana Finck, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Avi Steinberg, Michael

Crawford, Pat Byrnes, Edward Koren, Barbara Smaller, Frank Cotham SPOTS Luci Gutiérrez


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CONTRIBUTORSPrimo Levi “QUAESTIO DE CENTAURIS” P , who died in 1987, wrote memoirs, po-etry, essays, and works of fiction. “The Complete Works of Primo Levi,” a three- volume collection of all fourteen of Levi’s books, will be published in September.

Zadie Smith “ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK” P 8 is the author of, most recently, “NW.”

Thomas McGuane “FALL RIVER” P published “Crow Fair,” a book of shortstories, in March.

Jonathan Franzen “THE REPUBLIC OF BAD TASTE” P has written for themagazine since 1994. “Purity,” his fifth novel, comes out in September.

Rebecca Curtis “MORLOCKS AND ELOI” P is the author of the story collection“Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money.”

Jonathan safran foer “LOVE IS BLIND AND DEAF” P 4 is working on his nextnovel, forthcoming in 2016.

Louise Erdrich “THE COURSE OF HAPPINESS” P 4 won a 2012 National Book Award for her novel “The Round House.”

Sam Lipsyte “PACKAGE TOUR” P 8 has written three novels and two short-storycollections, the most recent of which is “The Fun Parts.”

Karen Russell “THE PROSPECTORS” P 0, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, haspublished four books, including the novel “Swamplandia!”

Daniyal Mueenuddin “LOST LUGGAGE” P is the author of “In Other Rooms,Other Wonders.”

Sara Cwynar PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS PP 8 0, an artist and a graphicdesigner, is an M.F.A. candidate in photography at Yale.

Christoph Niemann COVER published “The Potato King” in April. A solo exhi-bition of his work opens at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna next month.

ALSO:

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NEWYORKER.COM

Everything in the magazine, and more

than fifteen original stories a day.

SUMMER FICTION ISSUE: Zadie Smith

and Karen Russell read their stories.

Plus, the Fiction Podcast, withDeborah

Treisman and Michael Cunningham.

DAILY COMMENT / CULTURAL COMMENT:

Opinions and reflections by Jelani

Cobb, Rebecca Mead , and others.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Additional pictures

from Nicola Lo Calzo’s “Obia.” Plus,

a journey down every block of

Broadway: art work by Elise Engler.

NEWYORKER.COM/PODCAST:

Our new

hub for New Yorker podcasts. This

week, on the Political Scene, Jelani

Cobb and John Cassidy talk with

Dorothy Wickenden about race

relations and policing in America

after the death of Freddie Gray.

VIDEO: A look at the poems writtenand performed by jihadi militants

fighting for ISIS. Plus, a new episode of

“Comma Queen,” with Mary Norris.


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vous young girls, Trollope is masterfulin his portrayal of women as strong andcomplex individuals. Lady Glencora

M’Cluskie, from the Palliser series, isunforgettable. But I have to disagree with Gopnik’s claim that “Trollope isnot a sentence-by-sentence writer”; onthe first page of every one of his books,I have written page numbers of sen-tences that I don’t want to forget. Oneof my favorites, from “Doctor Thorne,”on the habit of drinking: “Habit is asecond nature, man; and a stronger na-ture than the first.” Elmera Goldberg

New York City

As the author and the co-editor of twobooks that Gopnik mentions, I wasglad to read a piece reflecting that Trol-lope stands the test of time. He is asrelevant today on gender, race, and pol-itics as he was in his own era. Still, Ihave never taught a student who hasread a Trollope novel before takingmy class. Many students are thrilledto discover a writer with whom few

Americans are familiar. Over the years,I have come to appreciate his workmore and more, thanks to scholarssuch as Robert Polhemus (“TheChanging World of Anthony Trol-lope”) and James Kincaid (“The Nov-els of Anthony Trollope”). Academicliterature helps students see Trollopeas writing not only about VictorianEngland but also about their ownlives—about psychology, the environ-ment, the political nature of all rela-

tionships, the comedy of human foi-bles—and about the need for faith insomething, usually the love of one in-dividual for another.Deborah Denenholz Morse Vera W. Barkley Professor of EnglishThe College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Va.

SAFE GROUND

Sarah Stillman’s moving article on the

dangers faced by unaccompanied chil-dren from Central America crossinginto the United States touches on im-migration court, but that is only one ina series of bureaucratic hurdles. (“Where Are the Children?,” April 27th). I aman attorney for Casa de Esperanza, anonprofit organization that provideslegal, educational, and social services tomore than three hundred children andabout a hundred of their family mem-bers. Children entering the country

must pass through a U.S. Citizenshipand Immigration Services AsylumOffice, where some are granted asylumbut others—who face beatings, rape, ordeath in their home country—are de-nied for arcane reasons. In immigrationcourt, judges are bound by out-of-datepolicies, which take a narrow interpre-tation of the law of asylum. My col-leagues, and people at other agenciesthat represent children seeking securityand opportunity in America, encoun-

ter overwhelming odds against our cli-ents. Circuit courts, much to their credit,have carved out ways of interpretingthe law to support children, as well as women fleeing domestic violence. Thesepeople deserve protection. Joyce Antila Phipps Executive Director, Casa de Esperanza Plainfield, N.J.1

TOASTING TROLLOPE

I was happy to read Adam Gopnik’spiece on Anthony Trollope (“Trollope Trending,” May 4th). Trollope has longbeen invidiously compared with CharlesDickens, and he has finally received thetribute that he deserves. I’ve been a Trol-lope reader for years and, even more, a Trollope re-reader. Gopnik provides afine analysis of Trollope’s insight intothe political and clerical concerns ofhis day, and he is right that Trollope’sstrength is his depiction of characters.I find that this is especially true of thefemale characters. Whereas Dickens’sheroines are usually angelic or mischie-

THE MAIL

•Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,address, and daytime phone number via e-mail

to [email protected]. Letters may beedited for length and clarity, and may be pub-lished in any medium. We regret that owing tothe volume of correspondence we cannot replyto every letter or return letters.


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J U N E W E D N E S D A Y • T H U R S D A Y • F R I D A Y • S A T U R D A Y • S U N D A Y • M O N D A Y • T U E S D A Y

photograph by pari dukovic

GOIG OABOUT TW

movies | THE THEATRE

art | classical music

DANCE |NIGHT LIFE

ABOVE & BEYOND

FOOD & DRINK

Chaka Khan’s 1984 interpretation of Prince’s “I Feel for You” begins with Grandmaster Melle Mel rapping

her name, followed by drums and Stevie Wonder’s harmonica; it’s not until the forty-five-second mark

that Khan’s vocals arrive, a fittingly late entrance for a diva. That song remains her biggest hit, but there

are many others: the slinky “Tell Me Something Good” and the insistent “Ain’t Nobody,” both recorded

with the group Rufus; the triumphant “I’m Every Woman”; and “Through the Fire,” sampled by Kanye West

on his first single, “Through the Wire.” Khan brings these and many more songs from her funky backcatalogue to Prospect Park on June 3, for the opening of the free-concert series Celebrate Brooklyn!

9 T H8 T H7 T H6 T H5 T H4 T H3 R D2 0 1 5

1 1 T H 1 2 T H 1 3 T H 1 4 T H 1 5 T H 1 6 T H1 0 T H


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On the RoadPioneering black filmmakers in a Great Migration series.

of Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration” paintings,MOMA is offering a noteworthy film program, “A Road Three Hundred Years Long: Cinemaand the Great Migration” (through June 12). It features the work of several black filmmakers who themselves moved North in the early twentieth century, and who made the transition

their subject.Oscar Micheaux, who directed his first feature in 1918, wasn’t the first black American

filmmaker—the great comedian Bert Williams directed his own comedies several yearsearlier—but he may well have been the first director of reflexive autofiction, as seen in “TheSymbol of the Unconquered,” from 1920 (screening June 3 and June 6). Born in southernIllinois, a virtual Southern territory at the time, he lived in Chicago as a young man beforebecoming a homesteader in rural South Dakota. In “The Symbol of the Unconquered,” hedramatizes that experience, probing both its over-all contours and its most intimate details.

The story is centered on Eve Mason (Iris Hall), a light-skinned young black woman fromSelma, Alabama, who inherits her late grandfather’s property in the northwest. There, shemeets a neighbor, Hugh Van Allen (Walker Thompson), a darker-skinned black man whofalls in love with her but, taking her for white, doesn’t dare to declare his affection. The story

parallels Micheaux’s own romantic misfortune—his undeclared love for a white woman—butthe filmmaker builds the underlying theme of racial conflict into a political conflagration thatreflects the monstrous violence of the day. As if in response both to D. W. Griffith’s heroic

depiction of the Ku Klux Klan in“The Birth of a Nation,” and tothe race riots of 1919, Micheauxfocusses on the story of Van Allen’spersecution by a local version of

the Klan, a cabal of pointy-hooded,torch-bearing men on horseback who plan to kill Van Allen andsteal his land. Micheaux, anautobiographical novelist beforeturning to movies, packs “TheSymbol of the Unconquered” witha wealth of side characters andsubplots that feel like a journalisticdeep dive into the economic, social,and criminal underpinnings of thestartup town as well as a literary

study of the complex psychology ofrace relations in the North.

The novelist Zora NealeHurston’s film work is one of thegreat revelations of MOMA’s series.Born in Alabama, she moved toBaltimore in the nineteen-tens,and to New York in the nineteen-twenties. Between 1927 and1929, she returned to the Southto study black residents’ customsand culture. Equipped with a

16-mm. movie camera, she filmed“fieldwork footage” ( June 9-10),depicting them at work, atschool, and at leisure. Though hermotives were anthropological,her results are poetic. Hurston’s visions of a baptism in deep water foreshadow the ecstaticimagery of Julie Dash’s 1991feature, “Daughters of the Dust”(screening June 7-8), whichdramatizes the 1902 departure

of Gullah island residents forNorthern cities.

—Richard Brody

Iris Hall and Walker Thompson star in the silent film “The Symbol of the Unconquered,” screening at MOMA.

VIES

10 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2015


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Now Playing

The Birth of a NationD. W. Griith’s grand-scale melo-drama, from 1915, centered on theCivil War and set mainly in SouthCarolina, is justly reviled for itsovert racism. The director puts afavorable light on antebellum slavery,shows the postwar South in the gripo ridiculous, rapacious, sexuallypredatory blacks, and depicts the

founding and deployment o the KuKlux Klan (by none other than hishero, a dashing young Confederateoicer) as a deliverance. The moviewould long have vanished into therathole o time were it not for thescope and inventiveness with whichGriith realized it. He modulatesspectacular battle scenes (includingthe phantasmagorical burning oAtlanta) with intimate dramas, andhe ilms his stories from multipleperspectives that, taken together, openthe movie up to far more—and moreambiguous—realities than Griithhad intended. A scene o a lynching

appears as an absolute, unredeemablehorror; the disenfranchisement o blackvoters as a cruel and criminal injustice.Though the bias o Griith’s story isblatantly false, his idea o ilm formis enduring and true. His conceptiono the cinema as the relection andliving repository o history oeredlater ilmmakers powerful and pro-tean tools with which to do the rightthing. Silent.— Richard Brody (FilmForum; June 7.)

The DamnedThe very irst shots o Joseph Losey’s

1961 drama set a tone o chilledalienation that’s utterly o its time,as does the action with which themovie begins—the assault on a propergentleman by a gang o leather-jack-eted teddy boys. The violent youthswho rampage through the rusticseaside town o Weymouth are ledby a sarcastic, dapper psychopath(Oliver Reed), who is pathologicallyattached to his sister (Shirley AnneField). She, in turn, falls in love withthe middle-aged American executive(Macdonald Carey) who was theirvictim. Meanwhile, a sculptor (VivecaLindfors) has a troubled relationship

with a government scientist (Alex-ander Knox), who is raising, in asecret program, a group o childrenwho are immune to radiation anddestined to be the sole survivors othe impending nuclear war. Losey’sstrongest critique o the times emergeswith a unique stylistic lourish inhis wide-screen, black-and-whiteimages, featuring slow glides, skewedangles, standoish perspectives,and hectic striations. These imagesseem adorned with quotation marks,as i Losey placed his own moviein the mediatized madness thathe was criticizing. His conlicted

approach to modernity appears inthe cutting-edge accessories—fromchic attire and high-tech audiovisualequipment to sports cars and balletic

helicopters—that dazzle him evenas he rues them.— R.B. (BAMCinématek; June 12.)

Gemma BoveryAn Englishman and his wife moveto a small town in Normandy, andcause a minor stir. Just to makethings worse, their names are CharlieBovery (Jason Flemyng) and Gemma(Gemma Arterton): a coincidence

that Joubert (Fabrice Luchini), thelocal baker, inds overwhelming. Asa devotee o “Madame Bovary,” heis especially gratiied when Gemma,true to her ictional counterpart, tireso her passionless husband and fallsfor a well-bred cad. Anne Fontaine’smovie, based on a graphic novel byPosy Simmonds, is never sure o theangle at which it stands to Flaubert’sbook; are we meant to be watchingan update, a parody, or an inoensiveri? And does the camera have tobrood quite so shamelessly overArterton at every turn? Only in theeyes o Luchini, rapt with balement

and provincial longing, does theilm feel worthy o its model. InFrench and English.— Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue o 6/1/15.)(In limited release.)

Good KillTommy Egan (Ethan Hawke) is amajor in the U.S. Air Force, stationedoutside Las Vegas. It’s an unlikelyperch for a combat pilot, especiallyone with thousands o lying hours tohis credit, but then Tommy, these days,never leaves the ground. He sits in ametal box and directs unmanned aerial

vehicles, or drones, toward targets onthe far side o the world—in Pakistan,Afghanistan, Yemen, and other hotspots. He dislikes the job, despite hisskill at it, and dislikes himsel evenmore for doing it; he takes to drink,his wife (January Jones) inds himdistant, and his senior oicer (BruceGreenwood) continues, against hisbetter judgment, to argue the casefor drone warfare. Andrew Niccol’smovie is almost Tommy-tight—in-creasingly airless, boxed in by itsown anxieties, and easier to admire,for its solid construction and itscommand o tone, than to warm to.

But the scenes o destruction, calmlywrought by remote control, grow evermore unnerving to the eye and theconscience alike, and Hawke doesa ine job o showing the progresso self-contempt as it eats into thehero’s habits and into his stricken face.With Zoë Kravitz.— A.L. (5/18/15)(In limited release.)

Greenery Will Bloom AgainIn this seventy-two-minute feature,the octogenarian Ermanno Olmidepicts the physical and emotionaltorment o Italian soldiers enduringcombat in subterranean barracks

beneath snow-packed ields duringthe First World War. His anecdotalnarrative—based on tales he heardfrom his father, a veteran—sardon-

ically relects the randomness odeath, as well as the unforeseeabledisplays o courage and outburstso revolt at moments o crisis. Lifehangs on the strength o a telephonewire, rampant disease ravages espritde corps, and the enemy’s espionageinspires paranoid anxiety. Over-all,the movie oers little o the visualpoetry and analysis that made Olmi’sname, but, in a remarkable scene near

the end, a literary soldier composesa letter to his mother and recites itdirectly to the camera, followed bya montage o archival footage. Thesequence delivers an aesthetic shock,and launches the ilm beyond thenarrow conines o the action. Withan intimate simplicity, Olmi evokesthe decades o political and socialupheavals throughout Europe thatfollowed the fragile peace, suggestingthe colossal toll o all wars. His storypoints past the Second World War andinto modern times. In Italian.— R.B. (Film Society o Lincoln Center; June6 and June 8.)

Heaven Knows WhatThe destructive power o heroin—theeects o the drug itsel and the des-perate eorts to get it—is in evidencethroughout this furious drama odestitute young addicts surviving onthe streets o today’s luxurious UpperWest Side. The directors Josh andBenny Safdie add an element thatrenders it all the more toxic: love.Harley (Arielle Holmes) is devotedto Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) with anearly religious fanaticism, despitehis brutal indierence to her suicidal

threats. She makes an attempt andrecovers in a psychiatric hospital; uponher release, she takes up with Mike(Buddy Duress), a motormouthedlow-level drug dealer who provokesIlya’s violent jealousy. The script,written by Josh Safdie and RonaldBronstein, is based on Holmes’smemoir; it’s illed with astonishing,geographically speciic details oaddicts’ daily practical agonies—thestruggle for shelter and a place to shootup, the habits o theft and begging,their unwelcome patronage o fast-foodrestaurants and public libraries, theemotional deprivation o near-feral

subsistence. The Safdies—aidedby the raw intimacy o Sean PriceWilliams’s camera work—captureHarley’s panic-stricken rage andfutile tenderness, as in a harrowingmacrophotographic shot o herinability to thread a needle due totremors.— R.B. (In limited release.)

In the Name of My DaughterThe true story o a late-seventiesmurder case, which is well-knownin France, is a ready-made classicmelodrama. Catherine Deneuveis calmly ferocious as Renée LeRoux, the elegant widow o a casino

owner in Nice who is struggling tokeep the business aloat in the faceo predatory competition from amobster (Jean Corso). Her lonely

Opening

Entourage

An adaptation of the inside-Hollywood television series,starring Jeremy Piven, asan agent; Adrian Grenier,as an actor; and JessicaAlba and Ronda Rousey,

as themselves. Directed byDoug Ellin. Opening June3. (In wide release.)

Freedom

A historical drama,connecting events aboarda mid-eighteenth-centuryslave ship with theUnderground Railroad.Directed by Peter Cousens;starring Cuba Gooding, Jr.Opening June 5. (In limitedrelease.)

Jurassic World

A sequel to “Jurassic Park,”about the catastrophiceffects of a theme park

featuring cloned dinosaurs.Directed by ColinTrevorrow; starring ChrisPratt and Judy Greer.Opening June 12. (In widerelease.)

Love & Mercy

Reviewed this week in TheCurrent Cinema. OpeningJune 5. (In limited release.)

Me and Earl and the

Dying Girl

A comic drama, about twohigh-school friends (ThomasMann and Ronald Cyler II)who make a film for aclassmate who has leukemia

(Olivia Cooke). Directedby Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.Opening June 12. (In limitedrelease.)

A Pigeon Sat on a

Branch Reflecting on

Existence

A comedy, directed byRoy Andersson, aboutthe misadventures of twoitinerant toy salesmen inSweden. Opening June 3.(In limited release.)

Spy!

Melissa McCarthy starsin this comedy, as a C.I.A.desk jockey who takes

on a dangerous mission.Directed by Paul Feig.Opening June 5. (In widerelease.)

The Wolfpack

Crystal Moselle directedthis documentary, aboutseven children whosefather kept them locked ina New York City apartmentfor many years. OpeningJune 12. (In limited release.)


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and socially awkward daughter,Agnès (Adèle Haenel), returns hometo ask for her inheritance, which istied up in the casino. There, Agnèsgets involved with Maurice Agnelet(Guillaume Canet), an ambitious butunappreciated—and married—localattorney who is her mother’s right-hand man. When Maurice’s drivefor power puts him at odds withRenée, he inluences Agnès to help

him work some behind-the-scenesmischief—and to get hold o hermoney. When Agnès disappears,Maurice is accused o murder. Thedirector, André Téchiné, has a keeneye for the Balzacian furies behindthe cold formalities o business andthe stiling mores o the provincialbourgeoisie. The movie’s French title,“The Man They Loved Too Much,”suggests its true focus: Maurice, theMachiavellian outcast who pulls thestrings. The story’s tension slackenswhen the action extends to later years,but by that time a dramatic feast hasalready been served. In French.— R.B.

(In limited release.)

LolaThis irst ilm by Jacques Demy islike an adolescent’s dream o romance,formed from old movies. Lola (AnoukAimée) is simple and open, an un-talented and not too bright cabaretdancer, a vulnerable, sentimental girl.The ilm gives us life rosetinted—alovely, quirky mixture o French-movie worldliness circa 1939 and theinnocent cheerfulness o M-G-Mmusicals o the forties. Demy gentlymocks romantic movie eects, which

he employs more romantically thanever. Characters suddenly get rich orare stranded on an island, and Lola’sdreams come true—and not just herdreams but her illusions. This is apoetic world in which illusions arevindicated. Lola, abandoned by hersailor lover, brings up their son in thebest sentimental, goodhearted-bad-girlmovie tradition, believing all the timethat her man will return, and, becauseshe sustains her faith in this illusion,he does return, fabulously rich andstill in love with her, and they driveo into a bright future as the othercabaret girls weep in unison at the

soul-satisfying beauty o it all. Lola,in top hat and boa for her nightclubact, is hersel a quotation—an homageto Dietrich’s “Lola Lola” o “The BlueAngel,” but only to the eervescentand harmless half. Released in 1961.In French.— Pauline Kael (BAMCinématek; June 6.)

Love at First FightThis drama, directed by ThomasCailley, is centered on the roughphysicality o two young adults in acozy lakeside town in western France.Arnaud (Kévin Azaïs) is a carpenterwho, with his brother (Antoine

Laurent), is struggling to maintainthe small construction irm that theyinherited from their father. Madeleine(Adèle Haenel), a disaected college

student from a bourgeois family, ispossessed o apocalyptic visions andparanoid plans for survival. Meetingcute in a wrestling match at anArmy-recruitment fair, Arnaud andMadeleine begin a brusque lirtationthat intensiies when they take a two-week Army commando-training course.For a movie about bodily enduranceand rugged adventure, Cailley’sdirection is oddly detached—he lets

the script (which he co-wrote withClaude Le Pape) suggest the toughwork and hardly bothers to ilm it.But near the end the long, schematicsetup delivers a remarkable twist: thenear-couple’s theoretical training forsurvival gets put to a severe practicaltest. Here, too, Cailley leaves mucho the most interesting action to theimagination, but the power o his ideaoverrides, albeit briely, the thinnesso its realization. In French.— R.B. (In limited release.)

MThe police investigation at the heart

o Joseph Losey’s 1951 remake o FritzLang’s 1931 German classic, aboutthe hunt for a serial child-killer,relects the McCarthyite inquisitionsthat Losey was enduring at the time(and which led to his blacklistingand exile). Sticking closely to theplot o the original, Losey turnsthe story into pungent Americanathrough his attention to alluringlygrubby Los Angeles locations. ErnestLaszlo’s cinematography renders themottled sidewalks and grim façadeseloquent; urgent tracking and craneshots convey the paranoid pairing

o menace and surveillance. DavidWayne brings a hectic pathos to therole o the psychopath at war withhis urges, and such character actorsas Howard Da Silva and RaymondBurr lend streetwise lair to the of -icers o the law and the underworldposse competing to catch the killer.The Brechtian irony o criminalsdelivering punishment is a Berlinimport, the Freudian psychology isan American touch, and the corrosiveview o the government is the kindthat could—and did—get a ilmmakerin trouble.— R.B. (Anthology FilmArchives; May 29 and June 1.)

Mad Max: Fury RoadThe fourth chapter in the saga o Maxand the best, even i you emerge withdented eyeballs. The loner’s role thatbelonged to Mel Gibson now passesto Tom Hardy, who, as is only proper,gets little to say but plenty to do, mosto it involving ire, dust, velocity, andblood. The time is the looming future,the landscape is dry and stripped ogreenery, and, to cap it all, Max isa prisoner. Once escaped, he teamsup with Furiosa (Charlize Theron), aone-armed and single-minded truckdriver, who is carrying a cargo o young

women—stealing them, in fact, froma masked tyrannical brute named Im-mortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), whouses them as breeders. The feminist

slant o the movie comes as a welcomesurprise, while the rampant verve othe action sequences is pretty muchwhat admirers o George Miller, thedirector, have been praying for. Rarelyhas a ilmmaker seemed less in needo a brake pedal. Luckily, his senseo humor remains undamaged, andhis eye for extravagant design is askeen as ever; some o the makeup isso drastic that you can barely distin-

guish between human lesh and thebodywork o cars. The director ophotography, keeping his composurein the melee, is John Seale.— A.L. (5/25/15) (In wide release.)

Magnificent ObsessionThis implausible, extravagant, co-incidence-riddled romantic drama,from 1954, made Rock Hudson astar and Douglas Sirk a specialist in“women’s pictures,” a genre that heinfused with a philosophical importall his own. The astonishing plot iscentered on Bob Merrick (Hudson),an arrogant playboy in a small town

in upstate New York, whose mischiecontributes to the death o a beloveddoctor, Wayne Phillips. Merrick meetsand falls for Phillips’s widow (JaneWyman), gets her into an accident thatblinds her, and—after many years odevoted exertions—becomes a brainsurgeon, in the hope o operating onher and restoring her sight. The lateDr. Phillips turns out to have beensomething o a religious philosopher,whose metaphysics o charity unlockedthe talent o his best friend (OttoKruger), an artist, who, in turn, impartsthe wisdom to Merrick—and Sirk, a

German émigré, locates the source othis New World gospel in the lovinglydepicted American landscape. Besidestreating the ridiculous story withthe utmost dramatic precision andvisual coherence, the director lendsit surprising thematic depth. Everystep depends on stiled emotions andclosely guarded secrets, resulting in abuildup o operatic passion that endowseveryday gestures and inlectionswith grandeur and nobility.— R.B. (MOMA; June 10.)

Mississippi MermaidFrançois Truaut’s doom-laden

romantic thriller, from 1969, starsCatherine Deneuve as Julie Roussel,a mail-order bride who travels fromher home in Paris to the island oRéunion to wed Louis Mahé (Jean-PaulBelmondo), a wealthy businessmanon whom she has predatory designs.Louis is inhibited and Julie is cagy;she ensnares him in a net o sexualobsession that pulls him, open-eyedand willing, down into the dregs o life.The ilm’s methodical pacing bears theanguish o a slow-motion catastrophe;long silences are built into the storyo the tentative couple. Under starchybourgeois formalities, Truaut inds

a rampant daily eroticism o leers andglimpses, probings and pawings thatare all the more enticing for their airo dirtiness. His tautly controlled

Revivals And Festivals

Titles in bold are reviewed.

Anthology Film

Archives

“This Is Celluloid: 35mm.”June 3 at 7 and June 6 at5: “Moonfleet” (1955, Fritz

Lang). • June 7 at 9: “M.”BAM Cinématek

“Black and White Scope.”June 6 at 4 and 8:“Lola.” • June 12 at 9:30:“The Damned.” • June 14 at5: “Red Beard.”

Film Forum

In revival. June 3-4 (callfor showtimes): “Pickupon South Street.” • June7 at 3:20: “The Birth ofa Nation.” • “GabrielFigueroa.” June 12 at 2:15and 5:45 and June 13 at2:15, 8:15, and 10: “LosOlvidados.” • June 16 at

6:45: “Nazarín” (1958, LuisBuñuel).

Film Society of Lincoln

Center

“Open Roads.” June 6 at 6:30and June 8 at 4: “GreeneryWill Bloom Again.”

IFC Center

The films of CatherineDeneuve. June 5-7 at 11 AM:“Mississippi Mermaid.”

Museum of Modern Art

“Cinema and the GreatMigration.” June 3 at4:30 and June 6 at 7:45:“The Symbol of theUnconquered” (1920, OscarMicheaux). • June 3 at6:45 and June 6 at 2:30:“The Blood of Jesus” (1941,Spencer Williams). • June7 at 2 and June 8 at 4:“Daughters of the Dust”(1992, Julie Dash). • June8 at 6:45 and June 11 at 4:“Swing!” (1938, Micheaux). •June 9 at 4 and June 10 at6:30: Short-film program,including fieldwork footageby Zora Neale Hurston(1927-29). • “GloriousTechnicolor.” June 10 at4:30: “Captain Lightfoot”(1955, Douglas Sirk). • June

10 at 6:45: “MagnificentObsession.”

movie OF THE WEEK

A video discussion of CharlieChaplin’s “Limelight,” from

1952, in our digital edition and

online. E V E R E T T


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widescreen images lend an unnatural chill to thegarish tropical light o Réunion; their complex anddelicate pirouettes throb with the thrill o sex andviolence. Under her cold manners and glossy looks,ulie is another o Truaut’s feral survivors o a

wild childhood, a vengeful outcast from a societythat tormented her from the start. The redemptivepower o love is joined with a stiled guaw oirony.— R.B. (IFC Center; June 5-7.)

Los Olvidados

Set in Mexico, Luis Buñuel’s ruthless—almostsurgical—examination o how the poor prey on oneanother is the most horrifying o all ilms aboutuvenile crime. The one masterwork on this subject,it stands apart from the genre by its pitilessness,its controlled passion. Buñuel doesn’t treat hischaracters as ideas but as morally responsiblehuman beings; there is little o the familiar Amer-ican-movie cant that makes everyone responsiblefor juvenile crimes except the juveniles. There’sno pathos in this ilm; it’s a squalid tragedy thatcauses the viewer to feel a moral terror. Buñuel,whose early work fascinated Freud, creates scenesthat shock one psychologically. Among them hereis the mother-meat dream—perhaps the greatesto all movie dream sequences; it is disturbing long

after the lacerations o the more realistic materialhave healed. Buñuel had intended much more inthis surreal vein but he did not have a completelyfree hand. For example, in the scene in which oneo the boys goes to beat up and kill another boy, thecamera reveals in the distance a huge eleven-storybuilding under construction; Buñuel had wantedto put an orchestra o a hundred musicians in thebuilding. The cast includes Estela Inda and RobertoCobo; the cinematography is by Gabriel Figueroa.Released in 1950. In Spanish.— P.K. (Film Forum;une 12-13 and June 16.)

Pickup on South StreetSamuel Fuller’s bilious, streetwise drama, from

1953, begins with what looks like a molestationon a crowded New York subway train, o a glossyyoung woman, Candy (Jean Peters), by a leeringyoung wol (Richard Widmark). But somethingelse occurs: he slips into her handbag and getsaway with her wallet—which happens to containmicroilm o a military formula that she’s deliveringto Communist agents. The man, Skip McCoy, isa well-known pickpocket (or, in the trade, a “can-non”), who is named to the police by Mo Williams(Thelma Ritter), an aging stool pigeon who livesabove a tattoo parlor on the Bowery. Candy, whohas a criminal past herself, also consults Mo andtraces Skip to his waterfront bait shack beneaththe Brooklyn Bridge, where both o them use sexas a weapon along with ists and beer bottles.

The police are following them, and Candy’s ex(Richard Kiley), himsel a Communist agent, isbeing threatened by Party higher-ups. Fuller’spugnacious direction and his gutter-up view ocity life romanticize both the criminal code ohonor and the jangling paranoia o global plots;his hard-edged long takes depict underworld cru-elty with reportorial wonder as well as moralisticdread.— R.B. (Film Forum; June 3-4.)

Pitch Perfect 2Despite the ribald joke that sets the plot in motion,this musical sequel is even more sanitized andfrictionless than the original. Because o a wardrobemalfunction at a high-proile performance (with theObamas in attendance), the Barden Bellas, America’s

collegiate-champion a-cappella group, are bannedfrom domestic competition—and must, instead,win a world title in order to be spared dissolution.Meanwhile, with graduation looming, the members

o the group have life choices to make: Beca (AnnaKendrick), the most musically talented, secretlytakes an internship at a recording studio; Chloe(Brittany Snow), the leader o the pack, delaysfacing life after college; Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson)can’t admit that she’s in love. The group’s chemistryis altered by the arrival o an over-eager freshman(Hailee Steinfeld) just as they’re preparing to facethe existential threat o a swaggering Germantroupe. Meanwhile, the bickering commentators, John (John Michael Higgins) and Gail (Elizabeth

Banks, who also directed), oer wan comic diver-sion. In her feature directorial début, Banks doesn’treveal much personality, though her aection forthe performers is evident; they’re a joy to watch,but they have little to do. Ethnic clichés abound,college comes o as a free sleepaway camp, andthe simple wonders o unaccompanied singingare inlated to Las Vegas-style bombast.— R.B. (In wide release.)

Red BeardThis 1965 ilm, the last o Akira Kurosawa’scollaborations with Toshiro Mifune, is oftenderided as a soap opera. But the story—o agrizzled nineteenth-century doctor nicknamedRed Beard (Mifune) and the green physician

(Yuzo Kayama) who learns humane medical valuesfrom him—is actually a masterpiece. Kurosawasomehow manages to imbue every moment othis three-hour-plus movie with the transcendentvitality and intelligence o a great Victorian novel.Mifune wisely plays a selless hero with iercebrusqueness. He leads Kayama’s headstrong,sensitive neophyte toward an understandingo healing as a social process, not merely as adoling-out o diagnoses and prescriptions. InKurosawa’s dynamic yet intimate wide-screenilmmaking, practicality and empathy mergewith psychoanalysis and even bits o magic; theyoung doctor’s near-fatal close encounter with afemale serial killer, and a virtuous man’s deathbed

confession o a horrifying marital tragedy, areamong the sequences building to a genuinelyinspirational conclusion. In Japanese.— Michael Sragow (BAM Cinématek; June 14.)

ResultsOne o the strangest and strongest o recent ro-mantic triangles forms in the course o this lyrical,fanatically realistic comedy, written and directedby Andrew Bujalski. His subject is the overlap obusiness and pleasure. Kat (Cobie Smulders) is atrainer at a gym in Austin, Texas, which is run byTrevor (Guy Pearce), a small businessman with abig philosophy, who is also her occasional lover.Trevor sees itness in terms o “physical, mental,emotional, and spiritual” values, which appeal to a

new client, Danny (Kevin Corrigan), who’s out oshape, well-to-do, and socially awkward. Kat beginsto train Danny in his palatial but unfurnished home;Danny’s big check for advance payments will helpTrevor expand the gym. But Kat begins an aairwith Danny as well, and their relationship gets inthe way o business. Bujalski pays close attentionto money and its power, seeing a small businesslike a ilm production—a matter o comic dramathat runs on personalities. He stages the clasheso idiosyncratic characters that give the enterpriseits life while observing the ininitesimal detailso which that life is made—how to make newfriends, how to hook up cable TV—as well as theethereally intimate connections that result.— R.B. (In limited release.)

Slow WestWhether the début feature from John Macleanwas wisely titled is open to debate. The story


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certainly ambles along, yet it lasts less than ninetyminutes, and there are times when it quickensinto bursts o compelling activity. Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the youthful Jay, who travels fromScotland (not that you would guess it from hisaccent) to America—aiming for Colorado, wherehis beloved, Rose (Caren Pistorius), is said to be.Enter Silas (Michael Fassbender), who knowsthe country and oers to guide the hapless Jayto his destination, for cash. Along the way, theyare tested by various incidents, some o which

are no more than narrative doodling, bereft opurpose; others, however, like a gunight in asecluded store, make more o an impact, as doesthe climax, set amid ields o ripe corn. Macleanreserves the best for last, in a quiet reckoning oall the human damage that has been left behind.In an uneven cast, it is Fassbender and Pistoriuswho stand out—the irst, as sombre as usual; thesecond, steady and lethal beyond her years.— A.L. (5/18/15) (In limited release.)

Tomorrowland

The new Brad Bird ilm begins in 1964, with a kidcalled Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) attendingthe New York World’s Fair—as bright on the eyeas the fair at the end o “Meet Me in St Louis.”

Wowed by what he sees, he is led by a sereneyoung girl (Raey Cassidy) to a theme ride, whichplunges him into an ideal future, frictionless andfun. Cut to the present, as the grownup Frank(George Clooney) hides away in a farmhouse,grumpy as hell, wondering what happened to all thatpromise. He is visited by Casey (Britt Robertson),an inquisitive student, whose hopes are as high asFrank’s used to be; together, they set o to indTomorrowland once more, to recharge the shapeo things to come. As you would expect from thedirector o “The Incredibles,” the ilm has plentyo zip when it’s on the run, and you can hardlymove for gizmos; i anyone was going to strike backagainst the rage for dystopian sci-i, it was bound

to be Bird. But there’s a blur o both motive andplot at the core o the movie, and a passage o pureblah at the end—no surprise, perhaps, given that thetitle refers to a zone at Disneyland. Hugh Lauriehas a thankless role as a villain; the acting honorsgo to Cassidy.— A.L. (6/1/15) (In limited release.)

Uncertain Terms

A rural group home for pregnant teen-agers isthe setting for this intimately detailed, sharplyobserved modernist melodrama, directed by NathanSilver. The director’s mother, Cindy Silver, playsCarla Gottlieb, the residence’s founder and leader.Carla—hersel a onetime unwed mother—hosts ivegirls at a time; in quiet but intense confessionalscenes o formal sharing or ohand chat, they

discuss their diicult situations. The troublesramp up with the arrival o Carla’s grown nephew,Robbie (David Dahlbom), newly separated fromhis wife, who volunteers for a two-week stint as ahandyman. While there, Robbie becomes a part othe household and falls in love with Nina (IndiaMenuez), one o the pregnant women, sparkingconlict with her boyfriend, Chase (Casey Drogin).Silver’s incisive direction blends patient discernmentand expressive angularity; he develops his charactersin deft and rapid strokes and builds tension withan almost imperceptible heightening o tone anddarkening o mood. The involuted acting and thefreestyle cinematography, intensely sensitive to thelickers o the moment, yield sensual and emotionalwonders. With a superbly poised, experienced

independent-ilm cast that includes Gina Piersanti(“It Felt Like Love”), Hannah Gross (“I Used toBe Darker”), and Tallie Medel (“The UnspeakableAct”).— R.B. (In limited release.)



who’s a very intelligent moviegoer said of the performer MarionCotillard that her acting seems so personal and delicate—like something between her andthe character—that you just want to leave her alone with it and not analyze what ’s going on. Ithink I agree. With some performers, talking about what they do feels intrusive, and not in thestandard paparazzi kind of way. Like many other people, I became aware of Cotillard when sheburned through the screen as Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan’s 2007 film, “La Vie en Rose.” Afterthat, I started to play catch-up.

Born in Paris in 1975, Cotillard is the daughter of two performers. Her father worked as a mimefor a time, and her mother is an actress and a drama teacher. Cotillard began acting at an early age,most notably with Jean-Luc Godard’s muse Anna Karina in the French television series “Chloé.”Like the older star, Cotillard seems to fully inhabit her best roles, which often center on struggle and

doubt conveyed through not too much dialogue. That’s part of Cotillard’s genius—letting silence beand not dressing it up with any “notice me” tricks. She knows what the camera can and cannot do tomagnify or reduce what burns through the soul and becomes character.

Cotillard is a characteractress who’s also a star. Thissummer, she makes her New

York theatrical début in a fullystaged reading of “Joan ofArc at the Stake,” directed by

Côme de Bellescize. (Originallyproduced in Japan, for SeijiOzawa’s Saito Kinen festival,it’s the final production ofthe New York Philharmonicseason, June 10-13, at AveryFisher Hall, in French, withEnglish supertitles.) Alongsidethe Philharmonic orchestra,Cotillard plays the martyredleader with an elegance thatmay bring to mind a scene in

the 1962 Godard drama, “VivreSa Vie,” in which Karina shedstears as she watches Falconetti

weep in Dreyer’s 1928 film,“The Passion of Joan of Arc.”

Cotillard is, she says, livingher own life. In an interviewshe gave after the birth of herson, now four, she said, “Havinga child has not changed the way I act, but it does stop mefrom bringing drama home in

the evening. Most of the time,my characters are not superhappy, full of joy, singing anddancing. You have to protecta kid from a dark mood, and yet I don’t want to protectmyself from my characters. It’sa struggle.” This is precisely what makes Cotillard one ofthe best actresses we have: herunqualified need for self-expression in any number of

roles, and her willingness togo for it.

—Hilton Als

ILLUSTRATION BY SACHIN TENG

TARE

saint joan Marion Cotillard plays Joan of Arc, at Avery Fisher Hall.



Openings and Previews

Doctor FaustusChris Noth stars in Christopher Marlowe’s taleo a man who sells his soul to the Devil, directedby Andrei Belgrader. In previews. (Classic StageCompany, 136 E. 13th St. 866-811-4111.)

Ghost StoriesTwo short plays by David Mamet, directed byScott Zigler. In “The Shawl,” a grieving womanvisits a mystic for help. In “Prairie du Chien,” a

card game on a train through Wisconsin turnsmenacing. In previews. Opens June 16. (AtlanticStage 2, at 330 W. 16th St. 866-811-4111.)

GloriaA new play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (“AnOctoroon”), directed by Evan Cabnet, follows agroup o ambitious editorial assistants who dreamo getting published by the time they’re thirty. Inpreviews. Opens June 15. (Vineyard, 108 E. 15thSt. 212-353-0303.)

Guards at the TajAmy Morton directs a new play by Rajiv Joseph(“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”), in whichtwo imperial guards in seventeenth-century India

watch the sun rise on the newly built Taj Mahal.In previews. Opens June 11. (Atlantic TheatreCompany, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111.)

HeisenbergDenis Arndt and Mary-Louise Parker star in a playby Simon Stephens, directed by Mark Brokaw forManhattan Theatre Club, about a random encounterbetween a man and a woman in a London trainstation. Opens June 3. (City Center Stage II, 131W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.)

My Perfect MindIn 2007, the classical actor Edward Petherbridgesuered a stroke while rehearsing for the part o

King Lear. He dramatizes the experience at the“Brits O Broadway” festival, in this collaborationwith Kathryn Hunter and Paul Hunter. Previewsbegin June 10. Opens June 16. (59E59, at 59E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.)

Notes of a Native SongStew and Heidi Rodewald, the musical duo behind“Passing Strange,” present an evening o songs, video,and ruminations on the work o James Baldwin. June 3-7. (Harlem Stage at the Gatehouse, 150Convent Ave., at 135th St. 212-281-9240.)

Of Good StockManhattan Theatre Club’s Lynne Meadow directsa play by Melissa Ross, in which a novelist’s three

grown daughters (Heather Lind, Jennifer Mudge,and Alicia Silverstone) reunite at their family homein Cape Cod. Previews begin June 4. (City CenterStage I, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.)

The Old MastersIn Sam Marks’s play, directed by Brandon Stock,a little-known painter who has mysteriouslydisappeared becomes the toast o the art world,leaving the artist friend who discovered hiswork hungry for recognition. In previews. Opens

June 7. (Flea, 41 White St. 212-352-3101.)

PreludesA new musical from Dave Malloy and RachelChavkin, the writer-director team behind “Natasha,

Pierre & the Great Comet o 1812,” in which thecomposer Sergei Rachmanino sees a hypnotistafter the ill-fated première o his irst symphony.The cast includes Gabriel Ebert, Eisa Davis, and



Nikki M. James. In previews. Opens June 15. (Claire Tow, 150 W. 65th St.212-239-6200.)

The QualmsPam MacKinnon directs a new playby Bruce Norris (“Clybourne Park”),about a suburban couple who attend aspouse-swapping party that challengestheir notions o free love. In previews.Opens June 14. (Playwrights Horizons,

416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.)

Shows for DaysA new play by Douglas Carter Beane(“The Little Dog Laughed”) traces theplaywright’s early experiences in com-munity theatre, at a small Pennsylvaniaplayhouse illed with big personalities.Patti LuPone and Michael Urie starin Jerry Zaks’s production. Previewsbegin June 6. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.)

Significant OtherThe Roundabout stages a new playby Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”),directed by Trip Cullman, about ayoung gay urbanite searching for loveas his female friends begin to settledown. In previews. (Laura Pels, 111W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.)

Smile at Us, Oh LordVakhtangov State Academic Theatreo Russia performs a play about Jew-ish resilience in the early twentiethcentury, based on the novels o theLithuanian-Israeli writer GrigoryKanovich. In Russian, with Englishsupertitles. June 5-7. (City Center, 131W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.)

The TempestSam Waterston stars as the sorcererProspero, in the irst free Shakespearein the Park production o the season,directed by Michael Greif. The castalso includes Jesse Tyler Ferguson,Louis Cancelmi, and Francesca Car-panini. In previews. Opens June 16.(Delacorte, Central Park. Enter at 81stSt. at Central Park W. 212-967-7555.)

10 out of 12Anne Washburn’s new work, directed byLes Waters, is set amid the drudgeryand high tension o a technical rehearsal

for a play. The fourteen-person castincludes Bruce McKenzie, Thomas Jay Ryan, Nina Hellman, and Sue Jean Kim. In previews. Opens June10. (SoHo Rep, 46 Walker St. 212-352-3101.)

The Twentieth-Century WayMichael Michetti directs Tom Jacobson’stwo-person play, about homosexualentrapment at a public restroom in1914 Los Angeles. Opens June 3. (Rat-tlestick, 224 Waverly Pl. 866-811-4111.)

3

Now Playing

An Act of GodIs God dead? Lo, He is playing eightshows a week at Studio 54, in the formo Jim Parsons, the spritely star o

“The Big Bang Theory.” Swathed in awhite robe and lanked by two crankyangels (Christopher Fitzgerald and TimKazurinsky), the Almighty has comeback to clear up a few misconceptions(He is pro-gay), unveil late-breakingCommandments (“Thou shalt separateMe and state”), and answer some olife’s eternal questions, such as “Whyis there something rather than noth-ing?” (Answer: “I was bored.”) The

former “Daily Show” writer David Javerbaum spun this crowd-pleasingentertainment from his popular Twitterhandle, @TheTweetOfGod, thoughmostly it’s a chance for Parsons tocoast on his cheeky sitcom persona.

Joe Mantello’s production delivers afew good laughs, plenty o groaners(“I have wrath-management issues”),and nothing approaching sacrilege. (254W. 54th St. 212-239-6200.)

ANT Fest 2015The annual showcase for rising talentscontinues, with highlights including KimKatzberg’s comedy “Terry: Recovering

Pet Detective”; “What’s This Called,This Spirit?,” a concert-play from theart-rock band the Scouts; “CheckpointCharlie’s State o Aairs,” CharlotteThun-Hohenstein’s burlesque varietyshow; and “Argument Sessions,” aninteractive piece derived from SupremeCourt transcripts. (Ars Nova, 511W. 54th St. 212-352-3101.)

The FlickThe thirty-four-year-old playwrightAnnie Baker has an uncanny earfor casual speech, with its micro-aggressions and muted yearnings. Her

Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which hasmoved downtown after premièring atPlaywrights Horizons, in 2013, probesthe banal patter o three employeesat a small-town Massachusetts movietheatre. Left to sweep up the discardedpopcorn o departed customers, Sam(Matthew Maher) and Avery (AaronClifton Moten) pass the hours swap-ping movie trivia, reviewing protocol,and tiptoeing around their attractionto Rose (Louisa Krause), the punkyprojectionist. Sam Gold’s production isdecidedly, almost daringly, slow, runningthree hours. Like Avery, who praisesthe movie house’s commitment to

celluloid, Baker is interested in texture:o conversation, o silence. Toward theend, when she introduces issues o raceand class, we realize just how handilyshe has recalibrated our senses to theininitesimal. (Barrow Street Theatre,27 Barrow St. 212-868-4444.)

A Human Being Died That NightIn Nicholas Wright’s play, based on abook by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, aSouth African psychologist interrogatesthe apartheid-era political assassinEugene de Kock in his prison cell.(BAM Fishman Space, 321 AshlandPl., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100.)

MacbethThis compact, muscular production,by the Public’s Mobile Shakespeare

Unit—a theatrical rapid-responseteam—returns to base after touringprisons, homeless shelters, and otherBard deserts across the ive boroughsand beyond. The director, EdwardTorres, shaves the gory fable o drama’smost murderous overachiever down toa breathless hundred minutes, duringwhich the limber eight-member en-semble plays some thirty characters.The aesthetic is Tudor revival with

an urban twist: arena seating, directaddress, grungy costumes. Somenuance is inevitably lost to pell-mellpacing, but the vibrant cast makes upfor it with clarity, commitment, andthe undaunted equanimity that comesfrom performing in a new room eachnight. During a recent show, LadyMacbeth (Jennifer Ikeda), accustomedto tough crowds, put the evil spiritson hold while a cell phone rang inthe audience. She got back to themafter the beep. (Public, 425 LafayetteSt. 212-967-7555. Through June 7.)

The Sound and the Fury

“I couldn’t leave it alone,” WilliamFaulkner said o “The Sound and theFury.” “And I never could tell it right.”But rightness has never particularlyinterested Elevator Repair Service(“Gatz”), a venturesome companyattracted to gae, snags, and elisions.They’ve remounted their word-for-wordstaging o the irst quarter o Faulkner’snovel, an aggressively nonlinear sectionnarrated by Benjamin Compson, thedevelopmentally disabled scion o afaltering Southern family. Twelve actorswander and dash through David Zinn’soversized living-room set, crossing

race and gender lines as they tradeshirts and nightgowns and roles, whilepassing around a paperback copy o thenovel. The action roves from 1898 to1928; projections occasionally delineatecharacter and setting. The result isantic, mournful, impressionistic, andmystifying, perhaps a greater testamentto the group’s loopy dynamism thanto Faulkner’s literary achievement.(Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.)

The Way We Get ByIn the predawn hours, Doug (ThomasSadoski) wakes up in a New Yorkapartment, hours after having “insane

good” sex with Beth (Amanda Seyfried,uncharacteristically abrasive). He’sawkward and puppyish and a bit o aman-child (“It’s vintage,” he says o his“Star Wars” T-shirt); she’s sarcastic andromantically jaded. What seems like aone-night stand between strangers isrevealed, during Neil LaBute’s eighty-ive-minute play, to be somethingthornier and stranger. One o LaBute’stalents is knowing how to spoon outinformation at satisfying intervals. Thedialogue can be artiicially gabby—youwonder how these two ever made it tobed, with all their talk about whetherit’s Sunday or Monday—but the play,

directed by Leigh Silverman, relaxesinto a sweet, searching little love story.Has LaBute inally gone soft? (SecondStage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422.)

Also Notable

Airline Highway

Samuel J. Friedman.Through June 7.

An American in Paris

Palace

The Audience

Schoenfeld

The Belle of Belfast

DR2. Through June 14.

Clinton the Musical

New World Stages

The Curious Incident

of the Dog in the

Night-Time

Ethel Barrymore

Finding Neverland

Lunt-Fontanne

Fish in the Dark

Cort

Fun Home

Circle in the Square

Gigi

Neil SimonHand to God

Booth

Hedwig and the Angry

Inch

Belasco

It Shoulda Been You

Brooks Atkinson

It’s Only a Play

Jacobs. Through June 7.

The King and I

Vivian Beaumont

On the Town

Lyric

On the Twentieth

Century

American Airlines Theatre

The Painted Rocks at

Revolver Creek

Pershing Square SignatureCenter. Through June 14.

Permission

Lucille Lortel. ThroughJune 14.

Skylight

Golden

Something Rotten!

St. James

The Spoils

Pershing Square SignatureCenter

The 39 Steps

Union Square Theatre

Tuesdays at Tesco’s

59E59. Through June 7.

The Two Gentlemen of

Verona

Polonsky ShakespeareCenter

The Visit

Lyceum

What I Did Last Summer

Pershing Square SignatureCenter. Through June 7.

Wolf Hall: Parts One

& Two

Winter Garden


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Museums and Libraries

Museum of Modern Art“From Bauhaus to BuenosAires: Grete Stern andHoracio Coppola”This big, handsomely installed exhi-bition devoted to the photography,ilm, and graphic design o a pair obusy but little-known avant-gardistsis as engaging as it is enlightening.Stern, a German artist whose earlyphotographic work (included here)was made in collaboration with EllenAuerbach under the name Ringl + Pit,

met the Argentine Coppola in Berlin,in 1932, and together they led NaziGermany the following year. Aftera period in London, where Coppolamade ine, atmospheric cityscapes,the couple resettled in Buenos Aires,where they married, in 1935. Coppoladocumented that city’s streets andarchitecture with an eye toward theinteraction between people and theircosmopolitan environment, while Sternmade a series o Surrealist photomontagerepresentations o dreams (nearly allo them with female protagonists),which appeared in the popular press.

These vivid but overwrought imagesare overshadowed in the exhibitionby Stern’s portraits, which are directand incisive in a style that recallsboth Man Ray and August Sander.Through Oct. 4.

Neue Galerie“Russian Modernism: Cross-Currents of German andRussian Art, 1907-1917”The museum takes a prudent step pastits usual Mitteleuropa stomping groundwith this exhibition o interrelatedRussian and German avant-gardes.Russian painters in the years before

the revolution embraced proto-Cubistforms (as in Natalia Goncharova’sscene o fractured rooftops) or aboldly colored Expressionism thatechoes that o Munich’s Der BlaueReiter group. (Alexei von Jawlensky, aRussian painter who was part o thatmovement, is represented here by agarish mountain scene.) The showbrims with names little known in theUnited States: a self-portrait by PetrKonchalovsky recalls Cézanne, whilea daringly lat painting by Boris Gri-goriev portrays a woman in plungingdécolletage. Russian art o the agecould be too dependent on folk repre-

sentations and neo-primitivism—andthis show, drawn in signiicant partfrom a private Russian collection,includes a few subpar landscapes

revisit and revive past formats (verticalpolyptychs or shaped, sometimeslayered canvases). The jumps fromstyle to style continually reset yourattention; it’s like speed-dating angels.The one recurrent form is a thick,backward-B shape in aluminum,painted black, blue, red, or yellow.(Depending on your approach, theshape seems to open or to close, likea mouth.) Everywhere dramatizedare Kelly’s masteries o color, con-tour, proportion, and scale. Whatother artist, except Matisse, makes

eulgent hues seem at one withcool intelligence? And in the art owhat other, except Mondrian, doesreductive design feel as passion-ate? Kelly knows what we like inabstraction—which we would notknow, so profoundly, i not for him.Through June 20. (Marks, 502, 522and 526 W. 22nd St.; 523 W. 24thSt. 212-243-0200.)

Jutta KoetherThe brainy German-born NewYork-based painter shows six newworks whose wispy red-and-pink

igures are accentuated by translucentunderpainting. The main room hasits lights on a timer, which allowsviewers to see the iridescent brush-strokes under three conditions: dim,bright, and brightest. Koether quotesas freely from modern life—in onework, Angelina Jolie bows to QueenElizabeth—as she does from arthistory. It may be unusual to see amedieval statue o St. Firmin holdinghis head in the company o a Balthusnymphet, but no weirder, Koetherseems to suggest, than a silver-screentomb raider turned humanitarian.Through June 6. (Bortolami, 520

W. 20th St. 212-727-2050.)

Lee LozanoDisgruntled artists—and even theoccasional cranky art critic—loveto threaten to drop out o the artworld. But Lozano actually followedthrough. In 1972, she left New York,stopped making art, and allegedlystopped speaking to women, as well.(She died in 1999, in Dallas.) Theive paintings here, from 1964-65, aresome o her sparest: sharp diagonalields o maroon, ochre, and darkgray, racing, at times, across multiplecanvases. Titles in the imperative

mood—“Cram,” “Slide,” “Pitch”—cap-ture the carnal, even violent energythat courses through Lozano’s work,but a suite o meticulous preparatory

drawings proves that her vigorous artwas far from improvisational. On onesketch she wrote three names in amargin: “Bot”[icelli], “Leon”[ardo],and “Piero,” masters she was eitheremulating or plotting to destroy.Through July 31. (Hauser & Wirth,511 W. 18th St. 212-790-3900.)

Lee UfanThe Korean minimalist, whose careerwas surveyed by the Guggenheimin 2011, was the leading igure inMono-ha, the Japanese corollary o

Italy’s Arte Povera, but with morephenomenological baggage. Lee’srecent sculptures are as gnomic asever: boulders placed near steel rodsand steel plates represent nothingexcept for themselves. Also onview are single-stroke paintings,which recall medieval Japanesemonochrome landscapes as much asthey do Barnett Newman’s zips—rect-angles o pigment that are neithermore nor less important than theempty canvas that surrounds them.Through June 27. (Pace, 534 W. 25thSt. 212-929-7000.)

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Galleries—Downtown

Shio Kusaka and Jonas WoodIn this appealing show by husband-and-wife artists based in Los An-geles—she’s a potter; he’s a painterand printmaker—Kusaka and Wooddraw inspiration not only from arthistorical precedents but also fromeach other. Kusaka’s Hellenisticstoneware vases, decorated withtriceratopses and brontosauri andwitches on broomsticks, are echoedin Wood’s paintings and drawings,which include jauntily decorated

vessels, as well as lowering plants.Two o Wood’s gouaches depict short,wide pots whose surfaces redeployMatisse’s “Red Studio” and “RedRoom”: domestic visions o a painterwho, like these talented igures, sawno point in distinguishing betweenthe ine arts and the decorative.Through June 13. (Karma, 39 Great

Jones St. 917-675-7508.)

Torbjørn RødlandLike Roe Ethridge and CharlieWhite, this Norwegian photographer,based in L.A., is at his best whenslick combines with uncanny and

starts to rot. Many o Rødland’spictures are disturbing ictions thatsuggest ilm stills: in a piece titled“This Is My Body,” a young girl

and genre pictures. There is relieat hand, though: the clarifying blasto Kasimir Malevich, whose 1914drawing o a black cross grew out ohis compatriots’ experiments but alsoblew them away. Through Aug. 31.

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Galleries—Uptown

Georg BaselitzThe German artist, an unexpectedinclusion in this year’s divisive VeniceBiennale, has been painting fraught,upside-down igures for nearly ifty

years. (Baselitz inverts the image,not the canvas; he paints as theretina perceives, before the brainputs the world right side up.) Thedozen works here, from the earlyeighties, portray men eating anddrinking with the artist’s signaturegestural brushwork. Whether youappreciate these dated paintingstoday depends on your tolerance forbombast and showmanship—and,given the artist’s on-the-recordremarks that women can’t paint,your tolerance for male chauvinism.Through June 27. (Skarstedt, 20

E. 79th St. 212-737-2060.)3

Galleries—Chelsea

Pablo BartholomewThese grainy black-and-white pictureslook like they were pulled from theIndian artist’s private photo albumfrom the seventies: pictures ogirlfriends, acid trips, and the livelybohemian circles that Bartholomewtravelled in during the era. Thereare some dark moments, chroniclinghis struggle with addiction, butthey’re balanced by more buoyantimages o friends—many o them

writers and actors from India’s ilmworld—dancing or sprawled togetheron a bed, always caught o guardin candid pictures that conveyintimacy, intensity, and an ohandcharm. Through June 20. (Erben, 526W. 26th St. 212-645-8701.)

Ellsworth Kelly“Have you noticed, in any museumthat has a Kelly, how everything elsethere looks sort o tacky?” So saidone smitten viewer at the openingo what may be the American artist’sall-time most thrilling gallery show.Commanding four separate spaces,

fourteen highly varied new paintings,reliefs, and wall-mounted sculpturesmake other art appear overdressedand ill groomed. Most o the works

RT



Museums Short List

Metropolitan Museum

“Van Gogh: Irises andRoses.” Through Aug. 16.

Museum of Modern Art

“Yoko Ono: One Woman

Show, 1960-1971.” ThroughSept. 7.

MOMA PS1

“Simon Denny: TheInnovator’s Dilemma.”Through Sept. 7.

Guggenheim Museum

“Storylines: ContemporaryArt at the Guggenheim.”Opens June 5.

Whitney Museum

“America Is Hard to See.”Through Sept. 27.

Brooklyn Museum

“Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence.” Through Nov. 1.

American Museum ofNatural History

“Nature’s Fury: The Scienceof Natural Disasters.”Through Aug. 9.

Asia Society

“De/Constructing China:Selections from the AsiaSociety Museum Collection.”Opens June 9.

Morgan Library and

Museum

“Hidden Likeness:Photographer Emmet Gowinat the Morgan.” ThroughSept. 20.

New Museum

“Albert Oehlen: Home andGarden.” Opens June 10.

galleries Short List

Chelsea

Ricci AlbendaKreps535 W. 22nd St. 212-741-8849.Through June 20.

Robert MotherwellRosen525 W. 24th St. 212-627-6000.Through June 20.

Garth WeiserKaplan121 W. 27th St. 212-645-7335.Through June 20.

Downtown

Susan CiancioloDonahue99 Bowery. 646-896-1368.Through July 5.

Brie RuaisMesler/Feuer30 Orchard St.212-608-6002.Through June 14.

“Enchanted Space: AnnaK.E., Dana Levy, MarilynMinter”Fridman287 Spring St. 212-620-0935.Through June 6.

gazes up at an unseen man whohas one hand at her throat and theother poised at her mouth, as i todispense communion. Elsewherebodies are bloodied or deformed,and even inanimate objects appearperverse—note the still-life o bentcutlery and a snarl o hair. Through

June 20. (Algus Greenspon, 71 MortonSt. 212-255-7872.)

Bert SternThe irst posthumous show o thefashion and celebrity photographer’swork—he died in 2013—is a savvymix o the familiar and the unknown,including contact sheets, proo prints,and ephemera from his archives.

Marilyn Monroe, whose 1962 “LastSession” with Stern dominated therest o his career, shares the spotlightwith Kate Moss, Brigitte Bardot,Veruschka, and Sue Lyon, circa“Lolita,” who gets almost a wall toherself. (Vladimir Nabokov makesa cameo appearance.) Among thediscoveries are a portrait o MarcelloMastroianni, illuminated by his litcigarette, and Richard Burton andElizabeth Taylor sharing a moment.Through June 20 (Staley-Wise, 560Broadway, at Prince St. 212-966-6223.)

Caragh ThuringThe London-based painter wants toslow her viewers down, and the irst

painting here will literally stop youin your tracks: a canvas covered ina thicket o Gottlieb-esque runeshangs from the ceiling, blocking theview o the rest o the gallery. Afterthe opening salvo comes a series ostrikingly diverse paintings, includinga portrait o three men in their un-derwear and a window opening ontoa garden against a checkerboard oblack and burgundy. Untreated linenpeeks out from the background omany o these works, a testament toThuring’s apparent conviction thatany gaze on the world, however in-tense, is always fragmented. Through

June 21. (Preston, 301 Broome St.212-431-1105.)

At eighty-seven, Alex Katz is at the top of his game. His recent paintings (including “Slab City II,” above) are on view at Gavin

Brown’s Enterprise through June 13; in July, he opens shows at the High Museum, in Atlanta, and Colby College, in Maine. A R T © A L E X

K A T Z / L I C E N S E D B Y V A G A N E W Y

O R K N Y



cLSical IC

Opera

Metropolitan Opera SummerRecital SeriesNow that the regular season hasended, the grandest o New York’sopera companies kicks o its shoes,rolls up its pant cus, and headsoutdoors. Presenting six free concertsover two weeks in parks across the iveboroughs, the series opens in CentralPark, with the mezzo-soprano IsabelLeonard, the soprano Janai Brugger,and the house favorite Nathan Gunn,

performing selections from “Faust,”“Carmen,” and “Porgy and Bess,”among other works, accompanied bythe pianist Dan Saunders. (CentralPark SummerStage, south o 72ndSt. metopera.org. June 15 at 8. Notickets required.)

On Site OperaThe imaginative company stagesPaisiello’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,”a musically straightforward comedy,long overshadowed by Rossini’s later,more brilliant version, in the stunningFabbri Mansion, on the Upper East

Side. It’s the irst entry in O.S.O.’snew series dedicated to Beaumarchais’Figaro trilogy; the company aims todisrupt the audience’s familiarity withthe plays by presenting lesser-knownadaptations o them in nontraditionalvenues across the city. Monica Yunus,David Blalock, and Andrew Wilkow-ske take the lead roles; Eric Einhorndirects, and Georey McDonald andAdam Kerry Boyles share conductingduties. (7 E. 95th St. osopera.org. June9 and June 11-13 at 7:30.)

3

Orchestras and Choruses

New York Philharmonic Jerey Kahane, admired both as aconductor and as a pianist, has formany years combined his skills intoa celebrated double act. Returningto the Philharmonic, his focus thistime is on Mozart, leading the PianoConcertos Nos. 20 and 21 from thekeyboard and the Symphony No. 38(“Prague”) from the podium. (June 3-4at 7:30, June 5 at 11 A.M., and June 6 at8.) •The Philharmonic concludes itssubscription season with a true piècede résistance: Côme de Bellescize’sstaging o Arthur Honegger’s oratorio“Joan of Arc at the Stake.” Calling

for actors, singers, orchestra, chorus,and even an ondes Martenot, thework crams an astonishing range ostyles into its eighty minutes, from

plainchant and Baroque dance to jazz and ilm scores. The captivatingMarion Cotillard stars in the speakingrole o the Maid o Orléans, whoselife lashes before her eyes in a serieso reminiscences while she awaits herexecution. (June 10-12 at 7:30 and June 13 at 8.) (Avery Fisher Hall.212-875-5656.)

New York Philharmonic“Contact!” SeriesOften held at the downtown boîte

SubCulture, the Philharmonic comes tothe Metropolitan Museum’s capaciousGrace Rainey Rogers Auditoriumto present the last o the season’snew-music events, “Focus on Japan.”Conducted by the superb Jerey Mi-larsky (in his Philharmonic début), theensemble moves to a chamber-orchestraformat to oer premières o works byMisato Mochizuki and Dai Fujikura(“Ininite String”), in addition toclassics by Takemitsu (“ArchipelagoS”) and Messiaen (“Sept Haïkaï,” anardent tribute to Japanese culture,with the pianist Stephen Gosling).

(Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. 212-570-3949. June 5 at 7.)

St. Petersburg Philharmonic:“Russian Day”In a move to promote its cultureabroad, the Russian Federation willcelebrate its national holiday inive cities around the world. NewYork’s Carnegie Hall draws YuriTemirkanov’s famed ensemble, whichwill be led by its associate conductor,Nikolai Alexeev, in two warhorses,Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony andShostakovich’s Fifth. (212-247-7800.

June 12 at 8.)

Juilliard415 withRachel PodgerTwo period-performance authorities,the conductor Masaaki Suzuki and theviolinist Rachel Podger, guide Juil-liard’s ine historical ensemble (alongwith musicians from London’s RoyalAcademy o Music) in a program thatwill début at the Boston Early MusicFestival and go on to Leipzig’s storiedThomaskirche: all Bach, it includes theDouble Violin Concerto in D Minorand the “Ascension Oratorio,” BWV11. (Alice Tully Hall. lincolncenter.org. June 15 at 8. Note: In addition,

Podger will perform music by Bach,Biber, and Tartini in a solo recitalat the Baryshnikov Arts Center on June 14 at 7.)

Recitals

Tyondai Braxton: “HIVE”The exuberant young experimentalmusician, in connection with therelease o a new Nonesuch disk,comes to the city’s natural home forcutting-edge performance to lead hismajor work o the past several years,a piece that evolved out o a projectabout collaboration and technologyfor the Guggenheim Museum, andhas since taken on a life o its own.Braxton and his musicians will perform

in an immersive installation by themixed-media artist Grace Villamil.(512 W. 19th St. 212-255-5793. June4-6 at 8.)

Locrian Chamber PlayersFor some two decades, the Playershave found a niche in the Gothamscene by performing only music thatis less than ten years old—and eachconcert oers something interesting.Works by three noted Europeancomposers—Kurt Schwertsik (theU.S. première o “Ein NamenlosesStreichquartett”), Howard Skempton,

and Julian Anderson (“Prayer”)—havepride o place this time, alongsidemusic by Andrew List and DavidMacdonald (“Little Suite”). (10thFloor Performance Space, RiversideChurch, 91 Claremont Ave. June 5 at8. No tickets required.)

Kettle Corn New Music:“Moving Mountains”Lisa Moore, one o America’sleading pianists for contemporarymusic, oers the inal concert oKettle Corn’s season, an evening atthe DiMenna Center that featuresbrand-new pieces by Kate Moore,

Chris Rogerson (“Noble Pond”), andStephen Cabell, as well the anchorwork, John Luther Adams’s “AmongRed Mountains.” (450 W. 37th St.kettlecornnewmusic.org. June 6 at 7.)

BargemusicIn a fortnight awhirl with novelty, theloating chamber-music series valuestradition. Two brilliant young artists,the cellist Nicholas Canellakis andthe pianist Michael Brown, oer arecital featuring beloved works fortheir combination by Schumann(the Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70),Strauss, Webern, and Chopin (the

Sonata for Cello and Piano inG Minor). (Fulton Ferry Landing,Brooklyn. June 6 at 8. For tickets andfull schedule, see bargemusic.org.)

Lukas Ligeti Fiftieth BirthdayConcertsLigeti, a percussionist as well as acomposer, has emerged from the longshadow o his formidable father to excelas a musician in the forward line ocontemporary culture, mixing minimal-ist, modernist, jazz, and world-musicinluences into an eective whole. TheAustrian Cultural Forum spearheadstwo birthday concerts this month: inthe irst, Ligeti collaborates with suchmusicians as the percussionist David

Cossin and the members o Ligeti’snew band, Notebook, in an eveningo small-ensemble works written forthe occasion. (11 E. 52nd St. June 11at 7:30. To reserve free tickets, whichare required, call 212-319-5300. Note:The Forum will also present anotherall-Ligeti concert at Brooklyn’s Rouletteon June 14 at 5:30.)

Chelsea Music FestivalMusic, art, and good food combinein this wide-ranging festival, underthe leadership o Melinda Lee Masurand Ken-David Masur, now well

established downtown. This year’sseries focusses on the music andculture o Finland and Hungary,showcased in a variety o concertsand other events. A program at CanoeStudios (one o several venues), hitsa glamourous note, with music bythe sesquicentennial birthday boysSibelius and Nielsen (performed bysuch noted musicians as the pianistHelen Huang and the bassoonistBrad Balliett) accompanied by “aculinary-art reception” prepared bythe chefs Carl Frederiksen and SamiTallberg. (601 W. 26th St. June 14 at6. For tickets and full schedule, see

chelseamusicfestival.org. June 12-20.)3

Out of Town

Music MountainThe summer shrine o the stringquartet, under the new leadership othe pianist Jonathan Yates, marks anauspicious start to its summer season,presenting the cellist David Finckeland the pianist Wu Han (the artisticdirectors o the Chamber Music So-ciety o Lincoln Center), who bringtheir emphatic style to sonatas forviolin and cello by Bach, Brahms(No. 1 in E Minor), Beethoven, and

Rachmanino. In addition, Wu Hangoes solo in Scriabin’s Five Preludes,Op. 16. (Falls Village, Conn. 860-824-7126. June 14 at 3.)


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New York City BalletThe season ends with a week o performanceso Balanchine’s great 1962 work, “A MidsummerNight’s Dream.” Among the many things to loveabout this ballet are Mendelssohn’s music, whichalternates between wit, petulance, and tenderemotion, and a touching pas de deux with a manin a donkey mask. That’s not to mention thedozens o children from the School o AmericanBallet, dancing the roles o bugs and butterlies,who ill Shakespeare’s forest with movement andlight. • June 2-4 at 7:30, June 5 at 8, June 6 at 2 and8, and June 7 at 3: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”(David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-496-0600.)

American Ballet Theatre

The highlight o this seventy-ifth-anniversaryseason is the company’s new “Sleeping Beauty,”in a production by Alexei Ratmansky that looksback in time. A.B.T. also presents another nine-teenth-century classic, the exotic “La Bayadère,”the tragic story o an Indian temple dancer whodies for love. Starry guests dancing in “Bayadère”include Kimin Kin, o the Mariinsky (June 1);Leonid Sarafanov, o the Mikhailovsky (partneringNatalia Osipova on June 3); and Alina Cojocaru,formerly o the Royal Ballet (June 5). • June 2 and June 4-5 at 7:30, June 3 at 2 and 7:30, and June 6 at2 and 8: “La Bayadère.” • June 8-9 and June 11-12at 7:30, June 10 at 2 and 7:30, and June 13 at 2and 8: “The Sleeping Beauty.” • June 15-16 at 7:30:

“Romeo and Juliet.” (Metropolitan Opera House,Lincoln Center. 212-362-6000. Through July 4.)

Brian Brooks Moving Company / PontusLidberg DanceFor his part o a shared week at the Joyce, Brooksoers “Counterpoint,” “Division,” and “Torrent,”recent works whose titles accurately forecast theplain ideas that Brooks develops with more craftthan imagination or drama. Lidberg, also straight-forward, includes falling snow in his “Snow,” alongwith blank masks, a toy boat, a balloon, and aBunraku-style puppet. In “Written on Water,” themovement swirls prettily, but without much weight.(175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Brooks: June 2-4. Lidberg: June 6-7.)

Cedar Lake Contemporary BalletThe Walmart heiress giveth and the Walmartheiress taketh away. Nancy Laurie founded thisNew York troupe in 2003, and funded it well, as itattracted technically impressive dancers and gainedan international reputation, but now she is pullingout. For the company’s inal performances, the morepromising o two programs features premières byRichard Siegal and Johan Inger, alongside perhapsthe best work in the repertory, Crystal Pite’s “TenDuets on a Theme o Rescue” (2008), which isperformed in both programs. (BAM’s HowardGilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn.718-636-4100. June 3-6.)

Kota Yamazaki / Fluid hug-hugYamazaki is a mix-and-match choreographer,drawing from Butoh, ballet, West African dance,sundry contemporary techniques, and the diverse

backgrounds o the international casts he assembles.“OQ” (the title sounds out the Japanese word for“palace”) brings together another motley crewfor another enigmatic ritual. (Japan Society, 333E. 47th St. 212-715-1258. June 5-6.)

Yvonne RainerSince she returned to choreography, in 2000, after atwenty-ive-year hiatus, the eminent postmodernisthas specialized in collages o simple movement,heavy music, and dryly recited text: commonplace

books set into motion by a game crew o veterandancers. “The Concept o Dust,” receiving itsEast Coast première, extends a recent thematicinterest in aging and mortality. Muslim history,global warming, and melancholy abut jazz hands,pillows, and whimsy. (Museum o Modern Art, 11W. 53rd St. 212-708-9400. June 9-10 and June 13-14.)

“ROBOT”What’s the dierence between man and machine?That question is asked again by the Spanish-born,Paris-based choreographer Blanca Li. Her whimsicalshow mingles a cast o human dancers with a groupo cute, pint-size NAO robots. The humans behavelike machines, hooked up to wires; the robots actlike people, aspiring to experience love. (BAM’s

Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.,Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. June 9-14.)

Alvin Ailey American Dance TheaterThe irresistible dancers o Alvin Ailey are back,with works old, new, and recycled. (As usual,“Revelations” will be performed almost everynight.) From Rennie Harris, there is a new hip-hop-based dance, “Exodus.” Robert Battle, thecompany’s director, presents “No Longer Silent,”a sombre exploration o group movement, ritual,and solitary suering. There’s also “Toccata,” anexcerpt from Talley Beatty’s jazzy “Come andGet the Beauty o It Hot” (1960), and “Odetta,”Matthew Rushing’s aecting tribute to the folk

singer Odetta Holmes. (David H. Koch, LincolnCenter. 212-496-0600. June 10-14 and June 16-21.)

Ballet Tech Kids DanceForty kids from Ballet Tech, Eliot Feld’s tuition-freedance-centric elementary- and middle-school program,perform an all-Feld program at the Joyce. Thisyear’s lineup includes the new “A Yankee Doodle,”full o kaleidoscopic marching patterns and set tocrisp bugle-and-drum music. (175 Eighth Ave., at19th St. 212-242-0800. June 11-14.)

“Works & Process” / Wendy Whelan andEd WatsonThe Royal Ballet dancer Watson and the intrepidformer New York City Ballet ballerina Whelan will

discuss the seeds o their joint venture—which willinclude new works by Annie-B Parson, Arthur Pita,and Danièle Desnoyers—with Stanford Makishi, andshow excerpts o new work. (Guggenheim Museum,Fifth Ave. at 89th St. 212-423-3575. June 14-15.)

3

Out of Town

Jacob’s PillowThis season o dance in the Berkshires begins un-conventionally, with the public-radio personality IraGlass. “Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host”entertainingly combines “This American Life”-stylesegments with tongue-in-cheek vaudeville dancenumbers choreographed by Monica Bill Barnes andperformed by Anna Bass and Barnes. Amid silliness,

sequins, and confetti, the dancers relect on long-termpartnerships and short careers; the self-deprecatingradio host gets personal and joins the dance. (TedShawn, Becket, Mass. 413-243-0745. June 13-14.)

DCE

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2015 25



key playerOlivia Chaney and her harmonium are reinvigorating English folk music.

--- Olivia Chaney wasclassically trained at the Royal Academy of Music, but she prefers the barroom to the operahouse. She embraces songs about sex, death, unrequited love, and murder, and, following in thetradition of June Tabor, Maddy Prior, and Sandy Denny, has a talent for savvy arrangements.

With an earthiness to her expressive soprano, Chaney is bringing the grand tradition of Britishfolk music into the twenty-first century.

Onstage—and on her début album, “The Longest River,” which came out in April, onNonesuch—Chaney moves between a few instruments, including the guitar, the piano, and theharmonium. The latter, a small hand-pumped organ, was prized by English missionaries to Indiain the mid-nineteenth century, who deployed it as a kind of portable church organ. Somewhat

ironically, Indian musicians co-opted the instrument, and it is now used in devotional musicindigenous to the subcontinent. “I love its complex history,” Chaney said. “It is no longer fromone place, really.” She discovered the harmonium a few years ago, when she saw an Irish musicianbusking with one near her house in London. She talked him into teaching her the basics, andthen she personalized it. “I’ve kind of invented my own bellows technique,” she said.

Live, Chaney has a casual yet commanding presence. She often performs barefoot, herlong dark hair piled high on her head. When she takes her place behind the harmoniumto summon its low moaning notes and, with a steely gaze, starts singing, it’s as if a mysticalspirit has entered the room. It’s chilling when she slowly intones “Stand by the roadside /facing the headlights / wait for the break of dawn,” on her adaptation of “Blessed Instant,” bythe Norwegian jazz singer Sidsel Endresen. “Singing is such a deep, affirming thing for me,”Chaney said. “The harmonium has to breathe, in a sense, with me. I love how weird it can

sound, without any electronics or microphones or special effects.” Chaney visits Rou

the new yorker - 8 june 2015

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