THE DOCTOR at THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

 

Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor. Photo: Manuel Harlan

 

In Robert Icke’s The Doctor, a teenage girl lies in a private hospital after a botched abortion. She is about to die. When a priest arrives to perform last rites, the girl’s doctor stops him at the door. The priest would be administering a last confession, to beg for forgiveness and admission into Heaven. Dr. Wolff protects her patient from all that—from the priest “walking in like the Grim Reaper.”

 

A secular Jew, Dr. Ruth Wolff is criticized for being insensitive to religious observance. Played by the brilliant and resilient Juliet Stevenson, the doctor knows that she is in the right and so does the audience. In the play’s second half, she’s brought to her knees and forced to hear her actions condemned at length in a tribunal. (Though it has nothing on BAM’s five hour The Iceman Cometh, The Doctor is nearly three hours.)

 

And yet, the highlight of the season is watching Juliet Stevenson put through the wringer in the sold-out The Doctor at the historic Park Avenue Armory. It has been twenty years since New York theatre audiences have had a chance to see her magic. Stevenson is best known and loved for her astonishing role in the 1990 movie Truly, Madly, Deeply, with co-star Alan Rickman.

 

Icke’s The Doctor is about identity, too. Make no assumptions. White actor John Mackay plays a priest who is Black. We are told one character who presents as female is actually male. Jaime Schwarz plays a colleague expected to defend Dr. Wolff, who shockingly tells her off in private. Each part is difficult, but the ensemble makes it so real that you expect to see the doctors adjourn at some point for coffee and donuts.

 

A drum set high above the stage contributes dramatically (Hannah Ledwidge) to this drama inspired by an obscure 1912 play from Vienna about a doctor and a priest.

 

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY and Junior's

Girl from the North Country, with a book by Conor McPherson, using the songs of Bob Dylan, was tried out to success in London. It opened here and, with the pandemic, closed and restarted a couple of times, which is to say, few will have seen it, before it collects Tony awards and closes at the Belasco.

Nineteen songs are from Dylan’s early canon, mostly. Are they unfamiliar or just new in this context? “Sweetheart Like You” is a revelation. The musical is set in a flophouse during the Great Depression, in Duluth, near Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. The Midwestern accent comes and goes. All the women are strong: Jeannette Bayardelle, Kimber Elayne Sprawl, Luba Mason (pictured). Jennifer Blood, the matinee understudy for Tony-nominated Mare Winningham, was graceful and hilarious, then sang a gorgeous “Like a Rolling Stone." Whereas, the male characters lean toward sinister, with the exception the paroled convict, a boxer, who is gentle and sweet, played by Austin Scott. In a musical break, Ben Mayne shook off the pathos of his character, Elias, with full-on charm and musicianship.

 

There was enough going on in the 1930s without the sleazy preacher and the shady ancient suitor. In spite of broad characters, the actors have chemistry and the world onstage is real. So different in nature from his Irish plays, Conor McPherson's book of Girl from the North Country delivers the dramatic shocks he is known for. One wonders what McPherson would do with, say, the canons of Neil Young or Patti Smith.

 

Bob Dylan has released stunning music just since the pandemic began. Should Conor McPherson write a sequel, please let it be set in the freer and happier 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s.

 

 

Junior's Times Square had outdoor seating before it became popular. Visitors to New York remember the club sandwiches and pickles Some people dream about the cheesecake and strawberry milkshakes. Junior's initiated an effort to buy back guns. To quote Grub Street: Allan Rosen of Junior's "donated $20,000 to the event, which went to the NYCPF, which in turn used the money to purchase iPads and offer larger-than-usual sums for the guns: a $200 bank card and an iPad for assault rifles and handguns, a $25 bank card for air guns, rifles, and shotguns. ‘Like everything else, guns cost a lot more now than they cost in the past, [Brooklyn DA, Eric] Gonzalez said of the higher totals being offered. ‘So we needed to induce more people to turn in the guns.’”

The Poetry Garden is said to be better in summer and fall, but it’s pretty great in winter, under heat lamps. On the fourteenth floor, attached to Bookmarks lounge, the garden is surrounded by spectacular views of midtown architecture.  

 

It makes one hungry! Meatballs in mushroom gravy, with garlic bread on the side, was a large small plate. A charcuterie platter came with truffle honey, cornichons, and good baguette. Truffled popcorn was freshly popped. (The ground floor of the Library Hotel has a full restaurant, Madison & Vine.) Cocktails include Tequila Mockingbird and Gone With the Gin, with Dorothy Parker Rose Petal Gin. 

 

At the bar, in the hotel reception, and on every floor, are packed bookshelves, but with an occasional gap between books, as though it were permissible to borrow and return, like at the Midtown library a couple of blocks west. The books are not matchy-matchy, arranged by color, yet they are consigned to be ornamental. The constant reader finds herself poring over the bindings for hidden gems—an unappreciated Victorian romance or murder mystery—to borrow and of course return, perhaps with late fees due. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to the Poetry Garden before the seasons change. Happy hour is weeknights, four to six, with $9 wine.  As the several Japanese maple trees turn bright orange, a mulled wine cocktail is added to the drinks menu, and when flowers bloom, frosé. 

 

Pascalou is one of the city's gems and the best restaurant on the Upper East Side. Across from the Corner Bookstore it was a weekend brunch destination well before the pandemic. The menu is varied and always offers something new. Congratulations to consistently high performing Pascalou for moving with the times, and long may you flourish. @carnegiehillneighbors

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT and 21 Club

Cherry Jones, Bobby Cannavale and Daniel Radcliffe (Photo Caitlin McNaney)

In the name of accuracy, a piece of reporting goes through a fact-checking process that roots out fabrication and plagiarism. A writer may try to deny what the fact checker turns up. The one in the witty The Lifespan of a Fact does that, and the editor is forced to intervene. With the magazine’s deadline on Monday the article must be fact checked over the weekend.

To study for his role, Daniel Radcliffe embedded with The New Yorker’s brilliant fact-checking team, much to their delight. Radcliffe makes a credible journalist, no mean feat, who gets so far into the article that he can propose a different lede and better title, which his editor approves.

As the editor, Cherry Jones is a boss. (Did Cherry Jones embed at The New Yorker too?) Her bristling “Norman Mailer” (Bobby Cannavale) turns out to live in a seedy apartment in Las Vegas that he shared with his mother until she died, in her chair.

Cannavale’s monologue about the chair is an unexpected tearjerker—and makes you question your own hold on truth. “I’m not interested in accuracy,” his writer says. “I am not beholden to every detail.” However, the sources for his feature article on deadline are “the homeless lady” and “the woman at the Aztec Bar.”

You’d think these three stunning actors could camp it up more. Directed to play it straight, perhaps it’s a given, because the ending will have the hairs standing on the back of your neck.

Hurry to see Lifespan of a Fact before it closes, and while Time magazine honors the noble journalist as their Person of the Year.

Frank Sinatra is the soundtrack at 21.

In Hitchcock's “Rear Window,” Grace Kelly orders lobster carryout from 21 Club to share with wheelchair-bound photojournalist James Stewart. In “Sweet Smell of Success,” memorable for such lines as “I love this dirty town!” the talent agent and gossip columnist played by Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster cut deals at 21. The restaurant is in more classic Hollywood movies than any other. Few restaurants come with higher expectations.

The food is good. To be specific, better than average. Truth is, we’ve been there but once, for the lunch special, not for the long menu that lists Dover sole for $76. In fact, that price is an anomaly, but how can one truly enjoy the perfectly fine prix-fixe salmon against the looming possibility of that stupendous Dover sole? The best part was that our kind old waiter could tell us exactly where Joan Rivers used to sit.

Cast iron jockeys at the entrance to 21 Club were facing sideways, until someone noticed in “All About Eve” that when Margo Channing, Bette Davis, rolls up to 21 Club, the jockeys are facing the street. Today, the jockeys face the street.

THE PARISIAN WOMAN and La Bergamote

Uma Thurman in her Broadway debut

 A tax lawyer with no experience on the bench aspires to land a seat on the highest court in the country. (Sound familiar?) But what if the apparently GOP appointee were a secret Democrat. An insurgent on the Supreme Court could eliminate gerrymandering and voter suppression. Idealism dates this new five-character play in our more cynical age.

The judgeship may yet come about thanks to the tax attorney’s wife, who works both sides of the aisle in DC. Chloe, played by Uma Thurman in her Broadway debut, once bravely moved to Paris for a while, thus her husband thinks of her as the Parisian Woman of the play’s title.

Thurman is a screen actor of the magnitude that you rarely get to see on Broadway. Thurman is almost always onstage, and you feel you get to know her through her unique body language. She is very tall. But the playwright gives her little to do. Chloe herself explains that she is unemployed and without interests, in a scene with the amazing Blair Brown, fully expressed as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Brown’s legendary major stage magic outshines Thurman, but she also has a better part, with more authority.

The Chloe part is never given the chance to shine—or to seethe, as Uma Thurman does so well in a Lars von Trier film for which she should have won an Academy Award. She never shows anger in this play, when her anger has lit up and focused the Time’s Up movement in Hollywood to which she gave a well thought out response. But like most of the characters in The Parisian Woman, she is made to spend most of the play with the tired prop of a glass of wine in her hand.

Not coincidentally, theatergoers are allowed to bring cocktails and wine to their seats, even to bring a whole bottle of wine, as the couple beside us did. This is highly unusual on Broadway, and we were distracted during suspense onstage by the glug-glug-glug of wine poured.

French bistro La Bergamote, a ten minute stroll from the Hudson Theatre, has a long showcase of pastries and a good wine list. It’s a quiet place to talk pre-matinee. Salads are fine but the pastas and egg dishes, superior. The eggs Benedicts include a version with crab cakes. Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame look almost conjugal. You may find a chic Parisian woman at La Bergamote, or that je ne sais quoi in a chic Argentinian woman and her handsome son (pictured). 

AINT MISBEHAVIN and Marcus B&P

The dazzling Ain't Misbehavin', Newark Performing Arts, photo by Yasmeen Fahmy

Thomas Fats Waller was born in Harlem in 1904. The son of a minister, he turned his abundant talents to songwriting, piano, singing, recording, radio work. He was a great hustler. New York producers must have loved to see him coming to demo a song and take his payment in cash. They said he would sell a song more than once, and other artists had big hits with songs they stole from him. Waller died at 30 of pneumonia on a train in Kansas, and thousands of people lined the streets outside his funeral. 

Forty years ago “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, the Fats Waller revue, rocked Broadway. I jumped at the chance to see it again in a production directed by original cast member André De Shields at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark. In ‘78 four of the five “Ain’t Misbehavin’” actors were so evenly matched that they were pitted against each other for Drama Desk and Tony Awards. The show won for best musical in both.

The new cast stays close to the delicious ‘70s interpretations. A lyric comes with a leer, a wink, and a double meaning. “Jitterbug Waltz” depicts the slow drag of a 1930s dance marathon. “Cash for Your Trash” – an ode to WWII rationing – doubles the tempo in the second half. It’s practically impossible to sing so fast. “The Joint is Jumpin’” scatters the cast as sirens blow. It’s Prohibition. Here come the cops.

The NJPAC production opened tentatively, but locked in early in Act I when the cast forms a chorus line to fervently demonstrate the manual and pedal sides of Waller’s stride piano – witty right hand over punching left. Rheaume Crenshaw sings a very simple “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling.” Borris York draws out every word of “I dreamed about a reefer five feet long . . .” in “TheViper’s Drag,” De Shields’s big number on Broadway. David Samuel self-mocks with “Your Feet’s Too Big” and “Fat and Greasy.” And the entire cast becomes motionless to sing/ask “What did I do to be so black and blue?”

Guest writer Becca Pulliam was a Jazz Producer at WBGO 88.3 in Newark, NJ, for 30 years.

 

Three dishes at Newark's Marcus B&P

Two blocks from NJPAC, an early 20^th century department store is restored and lovely. Enter Hahne & Co. on Broad Street and walk west under the cast-iron-ribbed skylight to Marcus B&P, the new restaurant with the celebrity chef.

Marcus Samuelsson is a great catch for downtown Newark, now rising. After winning a James Beard Award at Aquavit in New York City, he opened Red Rooster in Harlem. At Marcus B&P, B is for  bar with local beers and Newark apple cider on tap, and P is for Provisions. Samuelsson teams Ethiopian cuisine with Swedish. Almost every item on the menu is locally sourced.

Fresh, long-stemmed greens in the appetizing Laurel Garden salad come from AeroFarms, a large-scale indoor grower in Newark. “The dressing has a little kick to it!” said my lunch companions, and they said it again upon tasting the fried chicken and plantain waffles with pickled red cabbage and hot, local Tassot honey. And again for the Dorowat rigatoni. (Dorowat is the classic Ethiopian chicken stew.) The brick-oven pizza is classic, with bubbling crust.

There’s contemporary African-American art on the walls and neo soul music in the air. As our waiter Markus Jackson told us, Marcus B&P stays busy straight through the weekend, beginning Thursday after work.

ILLEGAL HELPERS and Kalustyan's

Illegal Helpers at the Austrian Cultural Forum, is a new German play by Maxi Obexer about the refugee crisis in Europe. Dialogue is taken directly from transcripts of quiet activists who help terrified refugees cross borders and avoid deportation, plus one fictional character (Lukas, played suavely by Viennese Markus Hirnigel) who at first observes what is going on from a cozy bourgeois distance. The other characters tell their stories, including a beloved white-haired aunt (Vivien Meisner, riveting) who considers herself less an activist than one who considers refugees adoptive family. Un-didactically, the 1990 Dublin Regulation is evoked that requires EU countries to accept applications from asylum seekers, and the fact that one can get legal action without legal status. The play makes you demand a fairer, more humane world.

A half-cynical, pony-tailed lawyer played by Mark Byrne instructs a group in how to build a case for citizenship, which includes getting a good interpreter. Then, he lays out his astronomical charge (10,000 euros) for the process. Although this was only a staged reading (and barely staged—music might have helped), you can see the possibilities. The ideas stick. Obexer’s play doesn’t make you laugh, but on the other hand, it doesn’t try to wring tears.

In Germany, as the play points out, only 2% of asylum seekers get to remain. In this country, the crisis is deportation. Every American has a friend who has recently been deported without reason, dragged away in the night. Illegal Helpers has relevance everywhere now. Performances have been in Chicago, Washington D.C., Hungary, and Chechnya. New Yorkers will have another chance to see Illegal Helpers in late August. 

Kalustyan’s is a Little India food shop with a cafeteria serving mostly vegan food of rare deliciousness. Spinach, eggplant, lentil, and couscous entrees come with salad, pickles, olives, and pita. Mujadarah (spiced lentils and delicately fried onions) platter is a favorite. Available drinks are nonalcoholic at this small upstairs eatery, open from 11 a.m. to 7:30.

The megastore downstairs is open from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. It is impossible to eat at the restaurant without wanting to do a little shopping on your way out. Bird’s nest pastries, halva, lentils of every shape and color, packaged snacks, nuts, dried fruit, herbed bread and samosas, stuffed grape leaves, curry pastes, chutneys, cookies, jams. Kalustyan’s house-made baba ghanoush is smoky and about the best in the world. The extensive tea section includes Lebanese love potion tea with 32 ingredients. People also come here for such health potions as fresh turmeric, senna leaf tea, gluten-free flours, spirulina, and neti pots. 

A DOLL'S HOUSE PART II and Un Deux Trois

In this revisionist Broadway season (the wheelchair in Glass Menagerie), the world’s most famous play about marriage, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, gets a refreshing sequel with A Doll’s House Part II, by Lucas Hnath. In fact, it’s better than the 1879 play from which it derives.

In the fifteen years since she walked out on Torvald and their children, Nora has done very well for herself and is a rich woman. However, nineteenth-century laws prevent her from being a free agent. Particularly while married, she could be put in jail for what she has accomplished. “Twenty to thirty years from now marriage will be a thing of the past,” Nora says confidently—a line that gets a big laugh.

Nora has come to secure the divorce that Torvald denied her. Indeed, he has explained her absence by saying she is dead. The family retainer, Anne Marie—played with heart and humor by Jayne Houdyshell—ultimately must defend her employer.

Nora’s formidable daughter, Condola Rashad (recently Juliet against Orlando Bloom’s Romeo), is concerned that Nora’s visit might throw a wrench in to her imminent marriage to a conservative banker like her father. Cast against type, Oscar-winning Chris Cooper’s Torvald is sympathetic and almost crushable. Think of all the repulsive Torvalds we’ve seen.

The great Laurie Metcalf gives another blazing performance on Broadway. You feel everything that her Nora feels. When she must connive to get her way, her wit and ingenuity are never in doubt. Even against oppressive tradition, she persists. She is Wendy Davis, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Sally Yates, Kirsten Gillibrand, Gabrielle Giffords, the Notorious RBG, and HRC, winner of the popular vote.

Contemporary language set against nineteenth-century costume suits the ensemble, as do a couple of anomalous twentieth-century devices: a water bottle, a box of tissues.

Café Un Deux Trois (123 West 44^th St) makes a famous country paté first course and delicious Boeuf Bourguignon, though doesn’t hone strictly to a French menu. An institution since its splashy opening in 1977, Un Deux Trois evokes the eighties and parties hard late at night once the play is over. It’s packed early for the pre-theatre prix fixe, three courses for $35, available from 3:30 p.m. until midnight, which includes the paté, plus a choice of pasta, chicken or fish. The popular chicken Kiev comes sliced up (preventing you from enjoying the little squirt when you first cut in). Pastas are deservedly popular here, and the fish choice daurade, was in an expert olive camponata, though served with minute rice. You order off the a la carte menu for frittes. Desserts included a perfect New York cheese cake with raspberry reduction and a superior chocolate mousse.

Interestingly dressed and coiffed theatregoers collect at an art nouveau bar. The banquette near the bar is a great location to enjoy both the bustle and the flirtatious French manager with waxed moustache, Gérard. “As in ‘Gérard Depardieu,’” he says.

THE DRESSMAKER’S SECRET and Rôtisserie Georgette

 

A dressmaker, played by Tracy Sallows, raises her nineteen-year-old son (Bryan Burton) in post-war Romania. Robi is fascinated with all things Western and has his sights set on America. His mother, of course, prefers that he stay at home.

When Irma, a member of the party visits to have a dress made, Maria is anxious and fears surveillance. Irma’s brother (Robert S. Gregory) is likely the boy’s father. After two decades, he wants forgiveness and his sister to set the record straight. Irma’s own intent is a real surprise.

Confessions are made and hurts uncovered. Sallows is grounded and complex as Maria. Irma (played by Caralyn Kozlowski) is strong as Maria’a old friend, dodging self-disclosure.

With Cold War surveillance a hot topic, this ambitious play co-written by Sarah Levine Simon and Mihai Grünfeld (who has his own story about escaping Romania as a young man) is timely. The 59E59 Theaters fearlessly take on political subjects, including a very well-praised play by Jeffrey Sweet about lawyer and Constitutional civil rights activist William Kunstler played by Jeff McCarthy.

Rôtisserie Georgette is a short block from the 59E59 Theaters. Tall ceilings and a baronial atmosphere were most inviting on a cold winter night. “It’s Louis XV meets the kitchen,” says the founder Georgette Farkas.

The bronzed rotisserie chicken is delicious all on its own, without the dipping sauces, as is the duck in a bitter orange sauce. Twice-baked potato is another specialty and beautifully presented. Two all-star sides were the stack of maple-roasted carrots with grain mustard and the wedges of golden winter beets, granny smith apples and mimolette cheese. We didn’t have time for dessert but were recommended the pot de crème au chocolate, served in the mug it was baked in.   JENSEN WHEELER WOLFE

HEISENBERG with Mary-Louise Parker

One of the freer actresses of our time, Mary-Louise Parker

We're still talking about a fresh, new, two-character play we came to too late to review in 2016, Heisenberg, by British playwright Simon Stephens. We hope Heisenberg does well at the Tonys.

Mary-Louise Parker played to raves on Broadway in 1990 with Alec Baldwin in Prelude to a Kiss, more recently starred in the cable TV Weeds, for which she won a 2006 Golden Globe, and she received a Tony in 2001 for her role in Proof. Parker doesn’t play victims or losers. She is bold and one of the freer actresses of our time.

In Heisenberg, which seems to be written for her, Mary-Louise Parker plays an American living in London, a hippie grifter who meets a well-preserved older man in a train station (Denis Arndt). Their unlikely friendship leads them to spend a night together. In the morning, he realizes her intentions were not as he thought. Given time to reconsider, he chooses to go along with her anyway. She boldly takes them where they’ve never been before.

It’s a mature perspective that what initially seems very good can turn out to be very bad—and revert back to good in the end. The uplift you get from Heisenberg is philosophic and romantic. The title is from physics’ Heisenberg uncertainty principle that explains the more clearly you see one thing, the less clearly you see another.

HANSEL AND GRETEL and Dulce Vida

Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel was performed in a holiday show by Amore Opera. The matinee audience was rapt as Gretel (adorable Smitha Johnson) murders the witch, shoving her into the oven, and with the superpowers newly invested in her, the children that the witch killed come back to life. It was a powerful moment. The ten children on stage were acting so totally.

Amore Opera nurtures a passionate performance, whatever the age of the singer. Rob Garner, with his velvet baritone and expressive acting, played the father. We were also pleased to see among the serious and professional gingerbread children Arden Wheeler Wolfe, in her third Amore opera. (Her favorite still is Don Giovanni.)

As the witch, Anita Lyons is full out, the way a witch should be. She is fun and creepy and enjoys every moment of her wickedness. She has some great dance steps! Amore Opera knows how to find humor in the drama (without resorting to broad panto casting). At a fraction of the cost of a ticket, don't expect the sets to compete with the Metropolitan Opera's. The forest backdrop seemed in danger of falling over, yet the magic went on. The orchestra is so good, conducted by lanky Richard Owen (in tux with tail coat). Looking forward to Carmen and a rare performance of Donizetti's La Zingara (The Gypsy Woman) in 2017.

Cozy, well-lit and welcoming, the Colombian restaurant Dulce Vida is prized on the Upper East Side. The menu is varied, though fish is practically absent. A popular platos fuerte is flank steak with rice, fried egg, red beans, plantains, and Colombian style bacon. The red bean casserole is another, with the Colombian style bacon, steak, and sweet plantains. Empanadas with shredded chicken or beef have a crispy corn crust.

Maria's Guacamole with plantain chips is especially great, and the vinegary pepper sauce, Aji, is simply wonderful, made in house. You can take a jar of Dulce Vida's green pepper sauce home. It's mild enough to serve to a Republican. Numerous postres (desserts) are also packaged to go, including flan and tres leches cake.

CAROL BURNETT and Cafe Luxembourg

Carol Burnett in her television show made outrageous fun of American types and celebrities in a timeless way. At the end she’d walk out as herself, in a gown by Bob Mackie (known for dressing Cher; Carol wore “a thousand” of his gowns and costumes). She would then take questions from the studio audience. This is recreated in the current show of remembrances that Burnett is taking around the world, with a new memoir, In Such Good Company.

Her New York City audience gave a standing ovation the moment she stepped out on stage, and their reactions were extravagant and out of control from then on. Carol Burnett at age 80-something delivers a Tarzan yell and an uncanny imitation of the voice of Jimmy Stewart, her girlhood heartthrob.

Questions from the vast Beacon Theatre audience on a night of the full moon included a person in the upper tier who uncomfortably asked whether, knowing what she knows now, she would have done something different as a mother. There was a sharp intake of breath from the audience—we knew her late daughter Carrie was afflicted with drug and alcohol dependence. Carol’s response, “No, nothing,” cut through the tension.

She said that her TV show (1967-1978) almost did not get off the ground because producers had cold feet, until the last minute. This major feminist point was probably lost on our younger critic, Arden Wheeler Wolfe. Instead, Arden was riveted by the costumes. Carol Burnett indeed has always been as svelte and upright as a haute couture model, the better to wear a thousand Bob Mackie gowns, with (we’re guessing) Joan Rivers’ stamp of approval on every one. “She looks like a sixty-year-old,” judged Arden, Jensen's ten-year-old.

Burnett reminisces with patched-in video of sketches and guest stars (Gloria Swanson! Maggie Smith! Madeline Kahn! Steve Martin! Betty White!). Asked if there is a film or TV program she would parody today, Carol answered, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Her fans know that she would nail reality TV in her subversive, joyously scabrous way. She makes parodists today (apart from Tracey Ullman, perhaps) look too safe.

Carol acknowledges a debt to the other comic geniuses on her team: Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway, and Harvey Korman. At the end she sings “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together,” sign-off of The Carol Burnett Show, and she pulled her ear lobe, the secret greeting she made at the end of every show to her grandmother, who brought her up. (Anyone who has read the account of her poverty-stricken Dickensian childhood never forgets it.)

Grateful to have been in the generous presence of Carol Burnett, we’re so glad we had this time together—actually, it felt magic. Get tickets if she’s coming to your town.

Like the country of Luxembourg, Cafe Luxembourg is tiny and pretty. It gets a pre-concert crowd and is always packed. The food is very good and priced accordingly. You’ll be happy if, price-consciously, you stick to the yellowfin tuna burger (with wasabi dressing, served with frites or salad), or the Luxemburger, served all day, or the roasted chicken in Dijon sauce (left) that is served with the beautiful frites, a bargain on the evening menu. The grilled octopus with Moroccan salad was extraordinary. Wish we had room for the pan-roasted lamb chops with zucchini blossoms or any of the classic French desserts. Cyndi Lauper was eating there on a recent night, in white tasseled earrings, looking so fab. (Yes, Cyndi, girls just want to have fun, you were so right about that!)

Café Luxembourg opened in 1983 and restaged a Brassai photograph of three fleshy women wearing only their shoes, standing at the bar with their backs to the camera. Clever marketing, and when you get your tab at the end of the meal at Café Luxembourg, you receive chocolates wrapped with the famous photo.

THE HUMANS and La Pulperia

Set David Zinn, The Humans. Photo Sara Krulwich/NYT

Brigid Blake (Sarah Steele) and Richard Saad (Arian Moayed) moved in together and want to show off their duplex to the Blake family, visiting from Scranton, PA. On a neat dollhouse set, it seems a hopeful fresh start. The parents’ disappointment quickly turns it into a badly wired basement apartment in the floodwater zone. Oh look, it’s snowing! says the host hopefully, peering out the apartment's single window. But it turns out to be floating ash, as a neighbor has emptied an ashtray into the courtyard.

In spite of glimmers of humor, this Thanksgiving feast en famille, The Humans, is unrelievedly uncomfortable, a play that runs for two hours with no intermission. For the duration, Granny (Lauren Klein in the mainly-silent role of Momo) is parked onstage in in a wheelchair, drooling out of one side of her mouth.

Although Irish ballads are sung, the Blakes seem as Irish-American as the Sopranos. They share tragic problems with no dramatic context. The food in Pyrex dishes passed around the table looks gassy, and the bathroom is often evoked, with the previous occupant apologizing for the smell in there.

The action is frequently interrupted by a startlingly loud sound, like a bomb—never explained. The Humans can be nauseating, but the program comes with a warning in capital letters: “The play will be performed without an intermission. IF YOU LEAVE YOUR SEAT FOR ANY REASON DURING THE PERFORMANCE, YOU WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO RETURN.”

A grounded and also funny character is the eldest, lawyer daughter played by Cassie Beck. Beck has a smart way of lightening things up—even though her character is overburdened by the playwright with a breakup, loss of her partner-track job, and uncerative colitis requiring a colectomy.

Jayne Houdyshell as the mother won the Tony for best featured actress. Houdyshell is hilarious when she discovers a mouse or cockroach. She lends a Shakespearean gravitas to the weakest lines, for instance as she reads the trite message Momo wrote before she lost her mind: "Dance more than I did. Drink less than I did. Go to church. Be good to everyone…".

Steele and Moayed are sweet as the young couple. What an ensemble of acting magnitude. There really should be a Tony Award for casting (Carrie Gardner, C.S.A.)! Reed Birney got a Tony as the father with the unpromising financial outlook. Also no surprise, David Zinn won for best scenic design. Young playwright Stephen Karam won the night’s fourth Tony for his play The Humans.

La Pulperia serves haute cuisine at moderate prices from a “borderless Latin menu.” We didn’t bother to take notes because everything we tried was so memorable. The signature appetizer is a light salmon brûlée, covered in a crisp burnt sugar shell and micro greens. Brazilian Moqueca Mixta (seafood with chorizo and soybean) is served in a large soup bowl with a halo of green coconut rice. This food is not heavy and is perfect for before a play. No bread is served or needed.

"Some people mistake us for a Mexican restaurant,” said our waiter from Puerto Rico, “so we added guacamole to the menu.” 

The grilled fish ribs are from a massive, prehistoric Caribbean fish. Next time we'll order that. Our grilled octopus was perfectly tender, and chewy, with a black crust. It came with a tasting of six vegetable cazuelitas, notably celery root gratin, eggplant chambota, and Russian potato salad with a Latin beat. Desserts are topped with ice cream made from tropical fruits cherimoya and lúcuma. 

The cocktail La Pulperia is pineapple, tequila, Cointreau, and jalapeno in a glass rimmed with black lava salt. Hibiscus Piscus is a deep red cocktail with chamomile tea, gin and pisco (brandy), with a rose bud floating on an ice slab.

La Pulperia’s bigger Second Avenue location offers a cooking and mixology class with chefs Carlos Barroz and Victor Medina in which you learn to prepare one dish and one cocktail. At the cavelike Theatre Row location there's a drag queen brunch on Sunday.

Small Mouth Sounds and Signature Theatre Café

In this intense, 100-minute, no intermission play, six people attend a silent meditation retreat. An unseen guru guides all-knowingly, promising participants that they will be changed by their experience. The guests are mandated to leave their cell phones at home, but when the guru's phone rings, he says, "I have to take this."

An appealing guest played by Brad Heberlee provides a monologue about his sad life, which was in and of itself good--but left us thinking each would get their turn to win our sympathies, à la Chorus Line. Fortunately, that does not happen--but one watches Small Mouth Sounds (terrible name for a play) expecting the worst. There is a lot of crying; each is overcoming a personal tragedy. A lesbian couple, played by Marcia deBonis and Quincy Tyler Bernstine, are the most affecting, dealing with illness. Theirs is an unsentimental part and inspiring. The one character who maintains his silence, Jan, played by Max Baker, creates a whole story when silent. His blue-eyed empathy is a beacon. If only the other characters didn't talk so much.

Bess Wohl and Rachel Chavkin are playwright and director of this ambitious play. Set designer Laura Jellinek came up with thrilling wrap-around video projection of summer cricket and hard rainfall.

Frank Gehry designed the Signature Theatre, a performing arts complex with three theatres, a drama bookstore, and a café bar with a grand piano, open most days in the afternoon. The café serves gooey flatbread pizzas, a fine salade niçoise ($8), hot empanadas, wraps, sandwiches and desserts. Paper plates and plastic forks, but wine is served in a proper glass. Friendly bar service, well lit, comfortable, and a late happy hour when the shows let out. For a mere $25 annual subscription you can be a card-carrying member of this happy, arty place.

DICK GREGORY at B.B. King Blues Club

There has never been a better time to appreciate the wit

"You're talking about Trump? You're the crazy one."

and wisdom of Dick Gregory, American civil rights leader, social critic and comedian, whose life is the subject of the hot, one-man Broadway play, Turn Me Loose. Actor Joe Morton plays Gregory eight times a week, delivering some of his best material and funniest lines from over the years. Morton was there to make a moving introduction before the 83-year-old Gregory took the stage with his latest stand-up act. 

The reason Canada never has extreme weather is because “it never fucked with the system.” White folk hire black folk “to change their babies’ diapers,” but white folk walk their dog and “pick up their dog’s shit.” Black folks and white folks are different; he gives numerous hilarious examples. A one-time diet and fitness expert, Gregory is in great mental shape and physical shape. He is more outrageous than ever. 

Often you think, “Did he just say that?” Shocking lines were delivered in a softer voice, like a stunning comment about the Queen that I couldn’t be sure I heard right.

Ever aware of his audience, Gregory follows a wild opinion with an innocent “So anyway…” He is au courant, celebrating yesterday’s Supreme Court victory on abortion rights: “Don’t let anyone tell you what the fuck to do.” Only one mention of the GOP nominee: “You’re talking about Trump? You’re the crazy one.”

To hear more of beloved Dick Gregory—with the language cleaned up—see the highly praised, extended by popular demand Turn Me Loose.
 

A lot is going on at B.B. King’s—Saturday Beatles brunch and Sunday Gospel brunch, not to mention weekly music trips to Cuba. I wish, then, that the food were less expensive and easier to get. This night was admittedly a sold-out spectacular occasion, but I waited an hour to be served the famous smoked beef brisket burger at $25. As famished as I was I found the French fries a bit soggy and the collard greens salty. People sitting near enjoyed Chef Wenford Patrick Simpson's lauded Memphis style BBQ ribs, shrimp and grits, and his delectably creamy macaroni and cheese. No one ordered a $12 dessert out of fear that it would be served after the show was finished. 

Jon Paris and his rocking band, with bass guitarist Amy Madden, were performing their weekly gig—no cover charge for some of the best live music in New York City. Paris’s guitar picks are his calling cards, printed with JonParis.com. I caught the guitar pick that Jon tossed into the audience. It was just like catching the bride’s bouquet or the home-run ball at Yankee Stadium.