More foolhardy is what feels like a tacked-on epilogue: a flashback to when Ruby was 11 and she and Daphne say what might have been their final goodbye (before Daphne adopts her). Its stiltedness is more the playwright’s fault than two characters searching for things to say. That ever-resourceful director Thomas Kail is unable to fully join the disparate strands of this memory play together, even as it’s enacted on Donyale Werle’s wonderfully dingy bar set and acted with forcefulness by the entire cast, especially Vanessa Aspillaga, who makes an intensely sympathetic Daphne, and Samira Wiley, whose Ruby is wounded but beautifully alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The performance of Sylvia on the evening of Friday, May 13th, featured an outstanding cast headed by the exquisite Russian ballerina, Maria Kochetkova, whose grace and precision were unfailingly dazzling in the title role. Her partner, in the role of Aminta, Herman Cornejo, one of the most brilliant dancers in the company, was equally riveting. My only caveat with respect to these two leads were limitations in the performances from an actorly viewpoint — I would have liked to see more emotional conviction.

 

This reservation did not apply to the marvelous Daniil Simkin, the best character player in the company, in the role of Orion — the dancer's performance was delightfully hammy as well as choreographically arresting. Excellent support was given by the other featured players — Arron Scott as Eros and Christine Shevchenko as Diana — while the other thrilling dancers, especially in thedivertissements,were too numerous to mentions. (Thecorps de balletwas also in fine form.)

 

My only significant criticism of this production is that it requires a strong directorial vision — elements of the scenography and lighting and some of the costumes are lovely and effective but as a whole the staging lives only in the dancing whereas it could — and should — be a complete spectacle. Still, any opportunity to see Ashton's endlessly creative choreography so vividly realized should not be missed by any connoisseur.

City Stories

Written and directed by James Phillips; music composed/performed by Rosabella Gregory 

Performances through May 29, 2016

 

Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone

Written by Eve Wolf; directed by Donald T. Sanders

Performances through May 1, 2016

 

 

Part of this spring’s edition of Brits Off Broadway at 59 E 59 Theaters—again bringing together an array of new work from across the pond—is City Stories, a smorgasbord of variable one-acts that melds into a pleasing platter evokes the sights, sounds and people of London.

 

Director James Phillips’s half-dozen playlets are in rotating repertory: the four I saw—Narcissi, about a couple’s lifelong distancing act; Lullaby, a futuristic tale of a city beset by a plague; Great Secret, about a search for the meaning of life; and Occupy, about the countless letters people have written to God, all stored in a cathedral—run from contrived to clever, all accompanied by songwriter Rosabella Gregory’s sprightly piano playing and singing, which comments on, at times even forming the crux of the alternately intimate and adversarial relationships on display.

 

In the talented cast, Daphne Alexander stands out with her bewitching manner and easy way with Phillips’ cascades of dialogue in Lullaby. Gregory equally transfixing: when singing the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” during particularly fraught moments in Lullaby, she brings Phillips’s somewhat forced allegory into sharper focus.

 

 

Anna Akhmatova was the brilliant Russian poet whose lifelong struggle against Soviet government officials is encapsulated in Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone, a stimulating multi-media performing piece written by Eve Wolf—who also performs several potent Russian piano works—for her enterprising Ensemble for the Romantic Century.

 

The ruthless and lethal tactics of the Stalinists are shown—sometimes absurdly, as when two apparatchiks dance together to Dmitri Shostakovich—alongside Akhmatova having an unforgettable evening in conversation with British intellectual Isaiah Berlin and commiserating with artist contemporaries like Sergei Prokofiev. We see how great artists, even when up against intolerant, uncomprehending authorities, continue to create.

 

And it was remarkable that Soviet artists were able to create such enduring works of art: and the best moments occur when Wolf and fellow musicians—fellow pianist Max Barros, violinist Victoria Wolf Lewis and cellist Andrew Janss—play works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Sergei Rachmaninov, briefly transporting her (and us) to a place away from the gulags and secret police, however much that reality informed their very creativity.

 

Ellen McLaughlin makes a strong-willed yet fragile Anna while Berlin is nicely sketched in by Jeremy Holm; Donald T. Sanders’ effective direction, coupled with David Bengali’s artful projections, Vanessa James’s evocative sets and costumes and Beverly Emmons’s resourceful lighting, vividly reminds us of art’s ultimate power to triumph over evil.

 

City Stories

59 E 59 Theatres, 59 East 59^th Street, New York, NY

britsoffbroadway.com

 

Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Fishman Space, Brooklyn, NY