Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Jackie

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Tina Benko in Elfriede Jelinek's Jackie. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Tina Benko in Elfriede Jelinek’s Jackie. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Jackie by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Gitta Honegger. Directed by Tea Alagic. With Tina Benko. Scenic design: Marsha Ginsberg; costume design: Susan Hilferty; lighting design: Brian H Scott; sound design: Jane Shaw. A production of the Women’s Project Theater. At New York City Center Stage II, 131 West 55th Street, 24 February-31 March 2013. Running time: 80 minutes; no intermission. Reviewed at the 4 March 2013 performance. More information and tickets here.

Jackie is not your mother’s Jackie Kennedy. In her one-person play, now in its North American premiere in an exemplary production by the Women’s Project Theater, Elfriede Jelinek acidulously dissects the public image of the former First Lady, anatomizing the deformations that culture and class inflict upon women who become a part of female iconography. Clad in a proper peach-gold dress (designed by Susan Hilferty) and a pair of eminently practical low-heeled gold pumps, Tina Benko’s unerring, similarly acidulous personification of the icon is not an impersonation exactly, but as she speaks with a comic faux-elegant accent that’s indigenous to no part of the United States, walks with a careful and somehow imperfect grace, Benko’s bravura and brave portrait permits no real compassion — not for a woman, she herself admits, who considers herself a nothing beneath her clothes; one can’t have compassion for a nothing. Her portrait is a mix of self-loathing, self-pity, and pain: but the mask is cemented on the face; there’s nothing to be done.

Director Tea Alagic sets the play on the deck and in the basin of some kind of empty swimming pool in hell (expertly designed by Marsha Ginsberg). As Jackie enters, dragging along and anchored to the bodies of the three men (Jack Kennedy, his brother Bobby, and her second husband Ari Onassis) and two children in her life, she begins to rehearse what we all already know about her. But Jelinek’s text seethes with fragmentation and despair, painting Jackie as a victim who is her own victimizer, collaborating with the patriarchy and capitalist celebrity ideology that keeps her firmly in her place. Benko demonstrates the steely, cool sensuality of those White House portraits of Jackie Kennedy, and she also expresses a vicious derision towards the kind of more tender, hot sensuality that her rival Marilyn Monroe, symbolized here by a series of Barbie dolls, possessed. What cruelty Benko inflicts upon those Barbie dolls is probably undescribable in a family newspaper, and her viciously caustic impersonation of Monroe herself provides one of the few, but well-earned, laugh-out-loud moments of the evening.

Those who know Jelinek only through her early novels in English translation or Michael Haneke’s film of The Piano Teacher don’t know her; after the publication of The Piano Teacher she strode off in a new direction. Jackie is one of Jelinek’s “Princess Plays,” in which Jelinek focused her attention on the deformities that female iconography in a patriarchal culture inflicts upon the individual woman. “The princess is a pre-stage of femininity, so to speak, and then of the woman,” she told Gitta Honegger in an interview published in an issue of Yale Theater magazine. “Mary Stuart represents the royal stage; princesses are the pre-stage, something that’s not yet settled. … [Jackie Kennedy is] obviously another woman in that kind of stage between. … So there is Jackie: all calculation, a very smart, educated woman, talented, too. … With this total focus on the right husband, everything is caught up in an intermediate stage, so to speak.” Dragging the bodies of her husband and children along, Benko’s Jackie remains caught in this hell — defining and deforming herself by the culture which forces upon her a narrow range of definition.

Perhaps things haven’t changed much. The fairy-tale sparkle and betassled minions that surrounded Michelle Obama when she presented the Oscar for best picture a few weeks back seem an indication that the dream of Camelot, however damaged by reality, remains a compelling metaphor for patriarchal governance. (Perhaps the First Lady today is a Queen, not a Princess, but it still partakes of a fairy-tale unreality shaped by the Culture Industry — which itself remains a patriarchy.) Jelinek’s smashing play — and Tina Benko’s unforgettable, electric performance — duly reminds us of the binds in which we are placed when we give ourselves wholly to others’ conceptions of what we ought to be, a mechanism which remains far more destructive to women than it does to men.

Jackie runs through 31 March. Below, the video trailer for the production:

Review: Iphigenia in Aulis

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Sandy York, Emily Zempel, and Jenny Lee Mitchell in Iphigenia in Aulis. Photo: Richard Termine.

Sandy York, Emily Zempel, and Jenny Lee Mitchell in Iphigenia in Aulis. Photo: Richard Termine.

Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. Adapted and directed by Edward Einhorn; music by Aldo Perez; choreography by Patrice Miller; art by Eric Shanower; sets and masks by Jane Stein; costumes by Carla Gant; lighting by Jeff Nash. With Amy Melissa Bentley, Lynn Berg, Michael Bertolini, Ivanna Cullinan, Giselle Chatelain, Laura Hartle, Paul Murillo, Eric Emil Oleson, Jenny Lee Mitchell, Sandy York, and Emily Clare Zempel. A production of the Untitled Theater Company No. 61. At La MaMa ETC, First Floor Theatre, 74a East 4th Street, 14 February-3 March 2013. Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission. Reviewed at the 24 February performance.

Edward Einhorn’s new production of Iphigenia in Aulis has several moments of great power, more impressive, perhaps, because his interpretation is founded upon the binary dichotomies that structure the play. The family and the state, the Dionysian and the Apollonian, the mob and the individual, peace and war, the contemporary and the ancient — all of these drive the dynamic of the story. Unfortunately the whole never fully gels, and one is left with an intimation of the power of the play, and a lesson about the difficulty of contemporary interpretation of an ancient work.

Einhorn’s own adaptation recalls other heightened-language translations and is deft enough, as is his staging — similarly heightened, recalling friezes found in ancient Greek art. I have no familiarity with the graphic artist Eric Shanower’s work, upon which the visual approach to the play is based, but it is not hard to see the similarity between comic art and the few remaining two-dimensional representations of Greek tragedy from the Hellenic era in which these plays were composed; the only examples of Shanower’s work in the production are small scrolls which are hung far left and far right (one of which is a witty parody of Mount Rushmore, the faces of Greek gods and generals replacing those of the American presidents) and a series of masks, created by Jane Stein, which, a program note suggests, are inspired by Shanower’s style. The performers themselves carry the masks at arm’s length from their faces, underscoring the division between the private and the public self.

Most intriguing and most problematic is the grunge-rock score, led by three musicians under Aldo Perez’s direction and a chorus of three punked-out women, Jenny Lee Mitchell, Sandy York, and Emily Clare Zempel. The chorus is onstage through the course of the play, occasionally commenting on the action (describing Helen several times with the distinctly un-Homeric epithet “stupid bitch”), and the thrashing energy of the songs is meant to contribute a contemporary, gritty energy to the ancient text. But as the narrative generates its tension, these songs, which interrupt the stringing out of this tension, stop the show in its tracks, despite the unquestionable energy and enthusiasm of the performers.

Dionysian rock music performance of the kind exemplified by the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols rarely works in the theatre, however theatrical these groups may be by themselves. It doesn’t work here either, and I think I know why. Dramas like Iphigenia in Aulis (and, for that matter, most dramas) are far more mimetic and driven by narrative than a rock concert. While through a two-hour Sex Pistols performance a Dionysian energy is generated and released, the technical and aesthetic constraints of more traditional theatrical performance undermine and restrain the wild and uncontrollable energies that the rock concert attempts to release. Theatrical performers need to hit their mark, are far more anchored by the director’s blocking and the specificity of the light and set design, than the more improvisatory movements of a rock band. It’s not as bad as a compelling story interrupted by commercial messages, but it’s similar, and the audience (especially in La MaMa’s First Floor Theatre, seated in rows that don’t precisely encourage one’s own Dionysian physical reaction to the music) oddly experiences the songs here passively rather than engaging actively with the lyrics. To my mind, this is the failure that undermines any possible effectiveness as rock music that the scores of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, perhaps more accurately described as pop music, may aim for.

So far as the performances in Iphigenia in Aulis go, the best among the effective cast are Ivanna Cullinan, Laura Hartle, and Michael Bertolini (particularly anguished) as the doomed Klytemnestra, Iphigenia, and Agamemnon. The show is a misfire — a noble and ambitious misfire, with moments of real power, but a misfire nonetheless.

Review: Good Person of Szechwan

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Taylor Mac as Shen Tei in the Foundry Theatre's Good Person of Szechwan. Photo: Pavel Antonov.

Taylor Mac as Shen Tei in the Foundry Theatre’s Good Person of Szechwan. Photo: Pavel Antonov.

Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht; translation by John Willett. Directed by Lear deBessonet; dramaturgy by Anne Erbe; choreography by Danny Mefford; lighting by Tyler Micoleau; costumes by Clint Ramos; sound by Brandon Wolcott. Music by César Alvarez w. The Lisps. With Vinie Burrows, Kate Benson, Ephraim Birney, Clifton Duncan, Annie Golden, Jack Allen Greenfield, Brooke Ishibashi, Paul Juhn, Mia Katigbak, Lisa Kron, Taylor Mac, David Turner, and Darryl Winslow. A production of the Foundry Theatre. At La MaMa ETC, Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East 4th Street, 1 February-24 February 2013. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes, one 10-minute intermission. Tickets here. Reviewed at the 5 February performance. More about the play here.

“Charming” isn’t a word usually applied to Bertolt Brecht’s plays; that grating sound you hear is the dramatist’s body rotating in his Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery grave. When I apply the word to the Foundry Theatre‘s new production of Good Person of Szechwan, though, I mean it in the most positive sense. Lear deBessonet’s staging, like her Saint Joan of the Stockyards in 2007, engages the audience without ever encouraging that audience to lose itself in empathy with the characters of the play (which would have sent Brecht’s corpse spinning even more wildly) — it retains its power to provoke critical thought about culture and society, the mission of the production company itself. Yes, it is charming — it is also thought-provoking, wildly entertaining and fun.

Let us take the plot and history of the play as read. The character of Shen Tei requires a performer of unique talents and charisma, and in Taylor Mac it finally has one. A long-time denizen of downtown theatre, Taylor Mac appears here in a rare foray into traditional theatre form (and, a hundred years on, Brechtian practice has become a tradition of sorts), and indeed he does play against the sentimentality that might be associated with the character. He is a striking figure — a whitened bald head, his camisole making no pretense at hiding his body hair as he performs and demonstrates the persona of Shen Tei — yet the expression of goodness and desire is all in the voice, the gesture. It does take him a while to fully invest in the character and the play — it isn’t until the “Song of Defencelessness of the Good and the Gods” about midway into the first act that he finally hits his most impressive stride — but until then the plot and explication are ably carried by the kabuki-via-Lower-East-Side charms of David Turner’s waterseller, Wang, who helps the three gods (Vinie Burrows, Annie Golden, Mia Katigbak) on their quest to find a single “good” individual. Other standout members of the uniformly excellent ensemble include Lisa Kron as Mrs. Mi Tzu and Mrs. Yang (though she does risk dipping into stereotype now and again more than the other performers, one doesn’t go to Brecht looking for psychological realism — at least, I don’t); Kate Benson as Shen Tei’s confidant Mrs. Shin, channelling a cynical Thelma-Ritter-style knowingness; and Clifton Duncan as Shen Tei’s arrogant and scheming beau, Yang Sun.

Accompanying the whole is a disarmingly complex neo-rustic score from César Alvarez w. The Lisps, with Sammy Tunis as the standout vocalist here; Matt Saunders’ set, a series of brown platforms that rises to the rear of the stage, becomes more and more elemental as the evening progresses, from a childlike assemblage of Szechwan shanties in the first act to a sparer look for the bleaker second act (including a surprisingly effective but minimal evocation of Shui Ta’s sweatshop).

A word or two more should be said about Taylor Mac’s performance, especially since it addresses what John Willett and Ralph Manheim wrote about the pitfalls of staging the play: “What seems rather surprising, in view of the high risk of having Shen Teh interpreted as a sweet-natured oriental waif, is that Brecht’s experience of Chinese acting, which so influenced him in other respects, never led him to propose giving the dual role to a man. This would instantly correct any undue softness that may stem from the sexually loaded ‘good woman’ image; moreover it seems to make it easier to see elements of Shui Ta in Shen Teh and vice versa, as the parable surely demands; nor is there anything in the text to rule it out.” Lear deBessonet’s mosaic of acting and production styles here includes both kabuki and queer theatre. Talk of “queering Brecht” is in the end probably just as academic as talk of “straightening Kushner,” but it does have the effect of injecting into this late mid-period work the irrational sensual and sexual drives of Brecht’s Weimar-period plays like Drums in the Night and In the Jungle of Cities. Indeed, as the play goes on, Shen Tei becomes more and more trapped in the body, gender identity, and persona of her bitter businessman cousin, Shui Ta, indicating how trapped in falsehood we may all become as we make our way through a culture which does not reward goodness. Taylor Mac, it must be said, captures this sense of entrapment brilliantly.

Good Person of Szechwan remains, I’m afraid, one of Brecht’s minor plays in my  estimation, but like the less successful plays of Shakespeare, his failures are often more interesting than the successes of lesser talents. Lear deBessonet, who is one of America’s leading interpreters of Brecht these days, makes Good Person of Szechwan most interesting, delightful, and charming indeed. This is a rare Brecht for all ages, too — and a special nod to second-grader Jack Allen Greenfield, a most impressive ensemble member here, for whom I predict a stellar future. It only runs for a few more weeks. You should help them sell it out by purchasing your tickets here.

Review: The Fever

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Simona Maicanescu in Wallace Shawn's The Fever.

Simona Maicanescu in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever.

UPDATE: For a chance to hear another early Wallace Shawn play, New Dramatists is offering a reading of Our Late Night (1975) on Monday, 28 January, at 7.00pm, followed by a conversation with “the legendary” Shawn and Francine Volpe. More information here.

The Fever by Wallace Shawn. Directed by Lars Norén; adaptation by Norén and Simona Maicanescu; lighting by Jean Poisson; costume by Chatoon; sound by Sophie Buisson; artistic collaboration with Nelly Bonnafous and Bob Meyer. With Simona Maicanescu as the Traveler. At La MaMa ETC, First Floor Theatre, 74 East 4th Street, 24 January–3 February 2013. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission. Tickets here. Reviewed at the 24 January performance. More about the play here.

For nearly all of The Fever‘s hour-and-a-half running time, Simona Maicanescu is confined standing in a small chalk-white box drawn on the floor, stage center, all of her body’s energy funnelled through her constantly moving and disciplined hands and face. They become a bodied representation of the cultural delirium charted in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever: expressions of fear, rage, and finally self-loathing, ultimately energy that has nowhere to go except outward to the audience. Once the audience absorbs that caustic energy — well, what then?

It’s a good question; the play itself provides no answer and, to its credit, neither does Lars Norén‘s production, which opened at La MaMa ETC last night and runs through 3 February. Premiered in 1990, performed by Shawn himself first in private apartments and then at the Public Theater, The Fever had a peculiar reception from New York Times critics. “[It's] nothing if not a musty radical-chic stunt destined to be parodied: a brave, sincere and almost entirely humorless assault on the privileged class by one of its card-carrying members,” wrote Frank Rich in 1990; about Shawn’s performance at a 2007 New Group revival of the play, Charles Isherwood smugly and dismissively wrote, “[Shawn] should know that a 90-minute monologue gives too much rein for straying thoughts about dinner plans and how best to catch a taxi after the performance” — something about the play brings out the obtuseness of Times critics, apparently. I note this only because performances of The Fever by actors and actresses other than its writer permit a clearer assessment of the play’s literary and dramatic achievements. (I describe the play in further detail here, where you can find a description of its narrative and structure.)

For this production, Maicanescu and Norén have trimmed the play somewhat, adding to its effectiveness (though the text concludes quite differently from that of the published version), and Maicanescu is a fascinating figure, constantly tense and coiled though wrapped in a fetching and elegant little black dress by costumer Chatoon. Her performance is possessed of a strange childlike innocence, underscoring the hypocrisy of the Traveler’s social position and alleviating somewhat the self-conscious irony inherent in the monologue form itself.

And, as I note above, it is a particularly bodied performance, appropriate to the many references to body in the text of the play: Jean Poisson’s lighting design traps Maicanescu in a variety of confinements: as her awareness of the poor is raised through the first half of the play, a second chalk-white square appears around the first in which the actress stands through the production, a broadening of consciousness; in the final third of the play, a gobo throws the shadow of prison bars across Maicanescu, trapping her in an awareness of her own responsibility for the world. It is otherwise a simple production (though, compared to Shawn’s own spare presentation at the Public in 1990, its scenic elements are as lush as any Franco Zeffirelli opera), elemental and sufficient.

On the other hand — and I would be dishonest if I did not admit my reservations about the play, apart from its very fine text, production, and performance here — I have a nagging feeling that, at the play’s conclusion, we are left with an affirmation of the social and economic determinism that the play itself seems to castigate. Like Mike Daisey’s monologues about globalization, The Fever is the presentation of the emergence of political awareness in American upper-middle-class consumers; it is a consciousness-raising work. But once that consciousness is raised, what is it precisely are we supposed to do with it? Obviously that’s up to us — but, given the United States 25 years after The Fever‘s premiere, the condition of political discourse in America, and the continuing poverty of the world, I wonder if that’s enough. It’s true that art does not provide political solutions — but this is a rationalization as well as a truth (as many rationalizations are, which The Fever admits).

Still, on a cold winter night, The Fever may leave you colder, not at all a bad thing. There is no reason to miss it; tickets are available here.

Authority and the critic

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One of the issues that will certainly arise at the upcoming Culturebot conversation at Under the Radar will be that of authority — specifically, where and how authority, power, and influence inhere in the arena of drama criticism. The rise of the “citizen critic,” as the title of the discussion has it, brings this issue to the forefront. Whether a piece of writing about drama and theatre is an evaluation (in the case of reviews) or personally-engaged, knowledgeable analysis (in the case of longer-form criticism), a reader assumes that the critic knows what he or she is talking about. But why? Michael Kaiser thinks he knows: “Most serious arts critics know a great deal about the field they cover and can evaluate a given work or production based on many years of serious study and experience. These critics have been vetted by their employers.” But not inevitably so, says Alison Croggon: “In the best circumstances, publications gain lustre from the quality of their critics,” she said a few years ago in an essay to which I will link tomorrow. “But in the worst … the situation has been the other way around: the critic has been important because of where she is published.” Online criticism may shift the field, whether it supplements, replaces, or — most dangerously, at least to those who continue to maintain the authority of MSM coverage — undermines the authority of that coverage.

Critics and reviewers also guide the cultural and social conversation about the aims, purposes, and interpretation of art. As we debate the wisdom of the rise of the “citizen critic,” I thought it might be useful to repost below my review of Venice Saved: A Seminar, a performance from David Levine and CiNE presented a few years ago at PS122. Levine’s wry, memorable piece called into question the extent to which directors and performers — and, by extension, critics — may lead the evaluation and discussion of any given play and the politics surrounding its production: the uneasy democratization of both the creative and the critical process, reflecting both its positive and its negative qualities.

Rather delightfully, this gives me the chance to recommend the opening next week of Levine’s Anger at the Movies, his sequel to the 2009 Venice Saved: A Seminar, as part of this year’s COIL 2012 festival at PS122, 150 First Avenue, which runs next Tuesday and Wednesday, 10-11 January. As it happens, Levine is also a panelist in the first Culturebot Conversation at Under the Radar, “Performance and Context: The Black Box and The White Cube,” on Sunday 8 January. As I said, both highly recommended. More information on this (and on “Everyone’s A Critic! Exploring the Changing Landscape of Arts Writing,” the Culturebot panel on which I’ll be sitting) available here.

Venice Saved: A Seminar by David Levine & CiNE. Conceived and directed by David Levine, incorporating an unfinished play by Simone Weil adapted by Gordon Dahlquist. With Jeff Biehl, James Hannaham, Jon Krupp, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Christianna Nelson, Colleen Werthmann and David Levine. Running time (at the performance I saw, though really it’s up to you): 3 hours and 15 minutes, one intermission. At Performance Space 122, 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street. Reviewed at the 21 March performance. Runs 21 March-5 April 2009.

In The Lesson, Eugene Ionesco subjects the teacher-pupil relationship to a caustic absurdist examination: a language tutorial which begins with benign intentions slowly reveals the sexual and political ideologies that underlie the educational experience to depict the most malignant autopsy of power relations. That’s not what David Levine and his CiNE co-conspirators at Venice Saved: A Seminar are after — no switchblades are produced, although at some performances a few metaphorical shivs are bound to make their appearance — but the entire evening plays with and examines the basis of “political theatre,” especially in the context of political education and discussion, raising questions of power and authority in the theatre and the classroom. And it’s a discussion which, properly, you take home with you.

In a way, I have to ask my fellow bloggers (who like nothing more than to hear themselves talking, or at any rate read themselves writing): where were you? Because here, in a piece of theatre determined to have a political edge in a post-Obama America, you’ve got a chance to say your piece in a theatre. And it’s dense, multilayered and delightfully comic theatre too. The audience gathers around a seminar table that encircles a playing area, and at the outset, the genial David Levine and his performers offer a primary text for examination: Simone Weil’s unfinished play Venice Saved, a dreadful piece of work about a Spanish conspiracy to destroy the Venetian Republic in the 17th century. Written in 1940 as Weil and her family were fleeing the Nazi occupation of Paris, the play is performed in bits and pieces as Levine and the other performers, also seated around the seminar table, demonstrate some common assumptions about political theatre, all the while providing biographical and aesthetic “context” in the form of contributions from dramaturgs and other performers.

But then, based upon the way the conversation is going, things begin to get seriously out-of-hand. A comment about the relevance of historical material to a contemporary political world gives rise to the performance of an “updated” scene from the play, set in a shipping container in 21st-century New York City populated by two revolutionaries and a whore. A comment upon the formal qualities of Weil’s rather pedestrian play is met with a staging of a scene from the play in the style of Black Watch. And weaving between these scenes is a conversation in which the audience is urged to take part: a democracy it seems, but always under the guiding eye of director Levine, the ultimate “authority” in this quasi-republic of the theatre, who can easily guide the discussion down predetermined channels as he sees fit.

Given the play itself and its author, several questions are bound to arise: Weil’s status as a possibly “anorexic” single Jewish woman with a pretense to Catholicism, not to mention her status as a writer and fighter in the Spanish Civil War; the French theatre during the war years, hung between Cocteau and Sartre’s 1944 No Exit; the role of the “public intellectual.” But ultimately, Venice Saved: A Seminar becomes less and less about Weil and her play and more and more about the political and aesthetic presumptions of the audience gathered around the table. The educational process is in some respects an attempt to seek answers to questions, but there’s no final answer to the questions that Levine and his collaborators seek to raise: What is political theatre? Is theatre itself a form that undermines any attempt at instrumental political action? So far as a director and his performers impose explicit or implicit political interpretations upon a drama in performance, does an individual audience member not do the same thing from their position in the auditorium? And how open are we to questioning those presumptions, especially when goaded to do so as passive recipients of a theatrical experience?

In Venice Saved: A Seminar, however, the recipients are not so passive: instead, they are encouraged to contribute to the explicit interpretation of the work. While this is audience participation with a vengeance, it’s also a skilfully crafted means of encouraging debate, even if director Levine, the leader of the seminar, directs this debate down predetermined avenues. And the “quality” (an ideologically determined word itself) of any given performance is based upon the quality of the audience and their willingness to participate, to engage — this too an aspect of “political theatre” open to question. At the performance I attended, I played a minor supporting role in the show, along with a playwright from Melbourne, New York director Ken Rus Schmoll, actor Matthew Maher, and most memorably PS122′s artistic director Vallejo Gantner himself (who saw his own institution subjected to comic political criticism in one of the scenes that parodied Weil’s play).

Of course, as Levine would say, all this is subject to cultural contextualization too: a bunch of fairly well-off middle-class Americans (racially mixed, but with a decided skew towards a Caucasian population; and to be fair, a few Australians as well) debating the relevance or irrelevance of political theatre in a small black box in New York’s East Village, trying to come to terms with both 17th-century Venice and 21st-century Israel and what they might mean to us. The political result of Venice Saved: A Seminar? Probably nothing. Unless, of course, you can measure results by the engagement of individual audience members in thinking about theatre and, by extension, the culture in which they find themselves. In that event, Venice Saved: A Seminar is a smashing success. If you need a dose of political theatre, I’m sorry to say that tickets to next week’s readings of Seven Jewish Children at the New York Theatre Workshop, a few short blocks from PS122, are very hard to get. But you might be better served by Venice Saved: A Seminar. In the “gift bag” given to each audience member, there’s a copy of Churchill’s play anyway. If you’re feeling really radical, you can always lead a reading of the play yourself at a performance of Venice Saved. Subversive, surely, especially if you don’t ask for a donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians at the end of it. Though in the context of Venice Saved, all’s fair. (And to whet your appetite, enjoy a few clips of a workshop production of Venice Saved at the CiNE Web site here.)