Pike Street

Living At Risk

Review of Pike Street, Hartford Stage

Character, we might say, is outwardly a question of manner and inwardly a question of one’s openness to others. By such a measure, Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street, at Hartford Stage through February 2, directed by Ron Russell, is full of character.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

All of its characters, enacted by Sun, the author and performer of the play, are manners she adopts at will, carrying on vivid dialogues, and Sun’s openness to others is what makes the play work. She is able to inhabit these folk because they aren’t just figments of her imagination: they are people who live a precarious existence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an existence made perilous by the imminent arrival of a hurricane. The backstories come to light as necessary to fill us in on the situation, but the main gist is the way the impending crisis brings out the character in these characters.

Evelyn is a Puerto Rican mom, beset by the fact that her daughter Candi, fifteen, has suffered an aneurysm that leaves her confined to a chair and in need of a respirator and a dialysis machine—and, with yet another major storm on the way with its possible attendant loss of electricity, Candi is at risk. The family, which includes Evelyn’s truculent and womanizing father, Poppi, played mainly for laughs, should evacuate to a shelter, says Con Ed, but moving Candi in her chair up and down five flights with no elevator is no picnic, and the kind of callous treatment the girl suffered last time—during Hurricane Sandy—leaves Evelyn loath to endure such indignities. Her solution: a generator in the apartment should they lose power.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Other characters come and go to flesh out the proceedings, particularly Evelyn’s brother Manny, just now returned from service in Afghanistan and the source of the income the family manages on. Manny is generally an ingratiating and agreeable sort—except when indeterminate triggers set off his PTSD, making him apt to cause some havoc with local Arab merchants. Neighbors, such as senile Mrs. Appelbaum, Ty, Manny’s pot-smoking chum, and Migdalia, Poppi’s woman-for-hire, add voices and occasions for reactions, as Evelyn tries her best to be staunch and patient like her deceased mother was—a healer who ran a botanica now closed.

Sun’s sure way of conjuring these characters opens their world to us and us to their world. One of the show’s more memorable moments is when a flashback lets us see Candi, as a child, campaigning for class president and sounding like a font of wisdom.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Before the show begins, Sun sits on the set’s lone chair, shelves of candles behind her, as the audience enters, seeming to commune within herself. She opens the show by reaching out to the audience, inviting rhythmic handclaps interspersed with deep breaths, as not only a way of focusing our attention but a way of making us all alert to each other and to the transformative possibilities of her story. Being present is key to the show’s message, showing how important the cohesion of this family—any family—is, while also hitting the audience with a tragedy that comes from the everydayness of bad decisions and bad luck.

The show’s final, indelible image is of the most at-risk character’s resilience, which is also in its way a cry for help. Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street finds its passion and its humor in the trials and joys of living and creates theater that feels—in our storm-stressed times—like a humanitarian effort.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Pike Street
Written & performed by Nilaja Sun
Directed by Ron Russell

Scenic Design: Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams; Costume Design: Clint Ramos; Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau; Sound Design: Ron Russell; Production Stage Manager: Molly Minor Eustis; Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Hartford Stage
January 9-February 2, 2020

What's Next on the Local Theater Scene

2020 has launched and the Connecticut theater season resumes this week.

New Haven:

Local theater troupe The New Haven Theater Company features a staged reading for three nights this weekend—Thursday, January 16 through Saturday, January 18—at English Markets Building on Chapel Street. The work is a new play in development by NHTC member Christian Shaboo. The Three Wisemen is about a young man facing uncertainty in his romantic life who takes to the road with the titular “wisemen”—his longtime roommates—to confront the ghosts of his past. The reading, directed by Shaboo, features NHTC regulars George Kulp (seen this past fall in Retreat from Moscow) and John Watson (last seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last season), as well as Aleta Staton, who appeared in Doubt in 2015, and newcomers Ny’Asia Davis, Solomon Green, and Eric Rey. For tickets for the limited seating go here.

At New Haven Theater Company this week only!

At New Haven Theater Company this week only!

Tickets are also available for the next full production at NHTC: Steve Scarpa, who directed Our Town, Proof, and Waiting for Lefty and appeared in Middletown, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay on the Death of Walt Disney, The Seafarer, and Doubt, among others, will direct J. Kevin Smith, who played the title role in Lucas Hnath’s …Death of Walt Disney, and Trevor Williams, who played Randall McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest, in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story, for three weekends, February 20-22 and 27-29, and March 5-7. This will be the first rendering of an Albee play by NHTC. (preview)

Yale Cabaret resumes its 52nd season at 217 Park Street this weekend—Thursday, January 16-Saturday, January 18—with a production of Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, directed by third-year Yale School of Drama director Christopher D. Betts. Betts directed the Cab’s season’s bracing opener, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, formerly known as Southwest Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, between the years 1884-1915 as well as two shows last season. Harris’ play, which was staged at SoHo Rep in 2018, is described as “a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge against their father in an epic saga” that mixes tropes from “Spaghetti Westerns” and Afropunk culture (review). Next up at the Cab is a brand new musical by third-year sound designer Liam Bellman-Sharpe called Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars: The Musical which explores the catchy idea that to prevent the colonization of Mars we must destroy the red planet to save the blue one. Thursday, January 23-Saturday, January 25 (review); for tickets and more information, including dining reservations, go here.

At Yale Cabaret this week only!

At Yale Cabaret this week only!

The Yale Repertory Theatre returns later this month with its third show of the season: Manahatta, a play by Mary Kathryn Nagle, former Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. In the play, set in 2008, a female descendant of the Lenape tribe—who were forcefully removed from the island of Manahatta by the Dutch in the 1600s—works on Wall Street during the mortgage crisis that opened questions of land ownership—and capitalist greed—anew. Directed by Laurie Woolery, who directed the play in its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018 and directed El Huracán, the Rep’s inventive season opener of 2018-19. Friday, January 24- Saturday, February 15 (review); in previews until Thursday, January 30; for tickets and more information go here.

The third and last show of the Yale School of Drama season plays in early February: Alice, Robert Wilson’s experimental treatment of Alice in Wonderland, with cabaret-style songs by Tom Waits, will be directed by third-year director Ellis Logan. Saturday, February 1-Friday, February 7 (preview) (review); for tickets and more information go here.

At Long Wharf Theatre, the third show of the season runs through February. Directed by Rebecca Martínez, I Am My Own Wife is Doug Wright’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning one-person play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transgender woman who survives the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Germany. Mason Alexander Park—who has played a variety of genderbending roles such as the Emcee in Cabaret, Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, and Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch—plays Charlotte and more than thirty other characters embodied in the role (preview). Wednesday, February 5-Sunday, March 1; in previews until Wednesday, February 12; for tickets and more information go here (review).

Mason Alexander Park

Mason Alexander Park

Hartford:

Hartford Stage’s first show of 2020 is in previews and opens this week. Directed by Ron Russell, Pike Street is Obie-winning playwright and actor Nilaja Sun’s solo show in which she plays dozens of roles in a story of struggle, survival and redemption for three generations of a Puerto Rican family on New York’s Lower East Side. In previews since January 9, the show opens on Friday, January 17 and continues through Sunday, February 2 (review); for tickets and more information go here.

Opening night this Friday at Hartford Stage!

Opening night this Friday at Hartford Stage!

Playhouse on Park in West Hartford continues its 11th season with Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical which features Susan Haefner, who originated the title role, as Rosemary Clooney. The show by James Yates Vogt and Mark Friedman is directed by Kyle Brand, who directed an energetic Avenue Q at Playhouse on Park in 2017, and depicts both the successes and struggles of Clooney’s long career, including such signature hits as “Come On-a My House,” with music direction by Robert James Tomasulo and choreography by MK Lawson. Previews are tonight—January 15—and tomorrow night with the opening reception on Friday, January 17; the show runs until Sunday, February 2; for tickets and more information, go here.

TheaterWorks returns at the end of the month with its second subscription show of the season. The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Karekan & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell is a CT premiere and the play was a NYTimes Critics’ Pick during its Broadway run in 2018. Directed by Tracy Brigden, who directed the delirious Hand to God at TheaterWorks in 2018, the play is a comedic treatment of the “current media tug of war” about so-called “fake news” and the way in which spin affects the status of facts. The three-person cast features actors with CT work in their resumés: Nick LeMedica starred in TheaterWorks’ Hand to God; Tasha Lawrence starred in A Doll’s House, Part 2 at TheaterWorks in 2019 and in The Roommates at Long Wharf in 2018, and Rufus Collins was in Long Wharf’s The Old Masters in 2011. Thursday, January 30 to Sunday, March 8; Press night: Thursday, February 8 (review); Pay-What-You-Can: Thursday, January  30 and Wednesday, February 5; All-Free Student Matinee: Saturday, February 8; for tickets and more information go here.