Theater review: This show is one 'Treasure'

By Louise Crawford

Calling all kids — and adults — who love swashbuckling adventure, pirates, and stories with smart, heroic children at the center.

At a recent preview of “Treasure Island,” now playing at Irondale Center, located in the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, I sat next to Jordan Cooper, an adorable second grader at Park Slope’s PS 321, who was attending the play with her mother, Karin Ford. 

She was rapt throughout the two-hour show, which includes a stellar cast of believably roguish actors, including Tom Hewitt as Long John Silver, Michael Gabriel Goodfriend as Black Dog, John Ahlin as Billy Bones and Philip Willingham as Willoughby. Rocco Sisto as Dr. Livesay, Kenneth Tigar as the Squire and Tom Beckett as Ben Gunn are also excellent.

Over the last few months, Jordon and her mom read the classic by Robert Louis Stevenson as a bedtime story, and they were both eager to see all their favorite scenes played out.

They were not disappointed.

“I loved all of it,” she told me. “Especially the scene where Jim Hawkins hides in the apple barrel.” (Indeed, heartthrob handsome Noah E. Galvin is simply wonderful as the young hero.)

If I say that the sound design by Will Pickens, the lighting design by Stewart Wagner and the set design by Tony Straiges stole the show, it is no diminishment of all the other well-oiled elements in this masterful production. That said, mention must be made of the teeming rain, the thunder, the tropical birds, the roaring sea, the seagulls, the cannon balls and the musket fire, which, add enormously, even exponentially, to the sensorial experience of the show.

The dirge-like singing, which is used as a transition between scenes also enhances the show. Credit goes to Ken Schatz, the musical director, who also appears as the Chanteyman (and also Mrs. Hawkins and Redruth). Small and immensely graceful, he climbs the ship’s rig and leads the pirates in classic chanteys in a voice both soulful and stirring.

Director B.H. Barry, who doubled as fight director and adaptor of this classic for the stage, deserves applause for the dramatic flow and the action-packed excitement.

This “Treasure Island” is a treasure, and it left Jordan and her mother wanting more.

“We’re going to go home and read the book again,” Ford told me.

“Treasure Island” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. at Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene. (718) 488-9233], now through March 26. Tickets $20-45. For info, visit www.irondale.org.

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Shiver our timbers! 'Treasure Island' comes to Irondale

By Michelle Manetti

Ahoy, maties!

The Irondale Center is battening down the hatches as it hosts “Treasure Island,” a new swashbuckling adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s coming-of-age story.

Tony Award-winning director B.H. Barry has been working on this version for more than a decade, finally perfecting the schooners, tropical islands and one-legged seamen to tell the story right.

“I started this 14 years ago and have been improving ever since,” said Barry, whose show begins Feb. 15 at the Fort Greene space. “Brooklyn is the perfect place to premiere this version because the audience is so cultured.”

Perhaps, but no matter how cultured the population is, everyone enjoys a good sword fight, and this high-seas spectacle utilizes Irondale’s stage and balcony for some sophisticated fight scenes as the play follows Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver and the rest of the pirate crew.

“There are quite a few action scenes that I hopefully choreographed well,” said Barry. “The audience should expect fighting, throat slitting and some real adventure.” (That said, Irondale says the production is family friendly.)

The director has kept the language and message of the original story, too, and the costumes are in 18th-century style to further bring the classic book to life.

“Those characters are just going to spring off the page,” said Barry.

“Treasure Island” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. at Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene. (718) 488-9233], Feb. 15-March 26. Tickets $20-45. For info, visit www.irondale.org.

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The Atlantic Yards saga is now a play

Billy Eugene Jones as James Caldwell in "In the Footprint." 

By Meredith Deliso

The battle over Atlantic Yards may be over, but it’s still brewing on stage.

“In the Footprint,” a new play by the Fort Greene-based Civilians theater company, gives a second life to the protests, public hearings and legal proceedings of the past seven years over the controversial $4-billion arena located near Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, the borough’s biggest development project — ever.

“It’s a very important story for Brooklyn, important story for New York City, and it’s important in and of itself,” said director Steve Cosson, whose play opens at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene this Friday. “Theater is first and foremost about conflict, and the whole Atlantic Yards saga has no shortage of dramatic conflict.”

This company is called the Civilians, after all, which makes investigative theater based on real-life people and events, so the focus in the show is on the people on the ground — the residents, the politicians and the community activists — to explore the project from different perspectives. Though the company’s allegiance to the community is clear.

“Atlantic Yards is important in terms of the power of activism and the power of different groups coming together in a coalition to fight and oppose the project,” said Cosson, who noted parallels in other development projects in New York, including the Columbia University expansion and the redevelopment of Willets Point in Queens. “There will continue to be new issues any time the powers that be decide that a part of the city should change, and I think the play isn’t about opposing change, but about how change happens, and what involvement the public has in the decisions that will impact places where people live.” 

The actors conducted interviews with such key figures as activists Patti Hagan and Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s Daniel Goldstein; Borough President Markowitz, a booster for the arena; and Councilwoman Letitia James, who was not. These and other familiar faces are portrayed by actors in the play, which is primarily a collection of their monologues, performed verbatim either as prose or in song.

Prominent figures who declined to be interviewed for the piece, including Mayor Bloomberg and developer Bruce Ratner, will be represented by puppet objects (a suit for Bloomberg, a crane for Ratner), with voiceovers compiled from public statements. 

A preview run-through on Monday at the Brooklyn Historical Society showed that the piece is at its best when it embraces the song format, though it does get off topic. Take, for instance, a song based off of a conversation with former Councilman Ken Fisher, where he sings about the “Four Brooklyns” — Manhattan, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and Florida. In another number, “A Word of Advice,” a new arrival warns against telling people what your rent is — so they don’t out-bid you.

Throughout the play, the tone ranges from anger to incredulity for those on both sides of the debate.

“The characters are sophisticated about gentrification, and the play seems to humanize the people involved,” said Tom Angotti, an urban affairs professor at Hunter College. “The human drama was much more complex than this gross idea in the press, that it was all about opposition by selfish, middle class homeowner who were gentrifiers and here was this benevolent developer who was going to build affordable housing and bring jobs, which all turned out to be rhetoric and public relations.”

For those who might yawn at the expected legal jargon, inside baseball or even a historical take on a story that is still playing out, Michael Friedman, who composed the music for the play, found just that challenge the most engaging part.

“For me, the most interesting thing was the dissection of New York — the complexity of how a community is made and the complexities of city politics and planning,” said Friedman. “All these things might make your eyes glaze over, but when you’re dealing with something this emotional, it helps you understand how the city works in a way that I hadn’t before.”

“In the Footprint” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. between Lafayette and Fulton avenues in Fort Greene, (718) 488-9233], Nov. 12-Dec. 11. Tickets $35. For info, visit www.thecivilians.org.

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Deadly theater

By Adam Warner

Don’t let the name fool you, “Je Suis Dead” (or, “I Am Dead”), is a play very much about the living.

The New York debut of Fool’s Proof Theatre’s play, opening Sept. 30 at the Irondale Center, teeters the line between the fictional and everyday, borrowing from the real-life experiences of company members — and, no doubt, a touch of Sartre.

The darkly comedic result is a puzzling piece centered around three strangers in the aftermath of a near-fatal train accident — a bit of “No Exit” if we ever heard it. Hell is other people? You betcha.

In this version of the ultimate Existential question, though, each character’s unique reaction to the post-trauma world is front and center. The aloof teacher, for example, must get down and dirty; the master-of-the-universe businessman adjusts to being knocked off his perch; and a lonely office worker finally learns to reach out to others.

Along the way, ghosts of the past — including a Berlin Dadaist, a turn-of-the-century British explorer, and a housewife from the South — flit in and out.

Tough to understand? But of course.

“The play is thought provoking,” said Mary Pearson, one of Fool’s Proof Theatre’s three core members. “We don’t try to make work that is too easily consumed. We’re happy if it stays with viewers for days.”

The director of the Irondale Center said she was honored to have the U.K.-based theater company debut its work in little old Fort Greene.

“It’s compelling, but it’s funny,” said Lucy Walters-Maneri. “There are only three actors, so it’s highly visual in terms of light and costume. The play is a wonderful self-reflective piece that reveals certain truths about us all.”

“Je Suis Dead” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. between Lafayette and Greene avenues in Fort Greene, (718) 488-9223], Sept. 30–Oct. 2 at 8 pm. Tickets $25. For info, visit www.irondale.org.

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Holy trinity! Sarah Rohl's triptych 'Passion Play' in Brooklyn

A church is the most natural — and most unlikely — setting for playwright Sarah Ruhl’s triptych, “Passion Play.”

Natural because the play explores the staging of the story of Jesus’s death and supposed resurrection; unlikely because of its critical examination of Christian pageants.

That should make the New York premiere of Ruhl’s play all the more intriguing when it opens on May 12 at the Irondale Center inside the historic Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene (catch it in previews now).

The ambitious “Passion Play” is comprised of three connected works, spanning 400 years and three countries, from Queen Elizabeth’s England to Hitler’s Germany to Reagan-era South Dakota.

One actor — T. Ryder Smith — plays all three of the leaders (which should make for some impressive costume changes), while the rest of the cast of 12 takes on the roles of people putting on pageants.

In “Passion Play,” Ruhl — the toast of the theater world even before last year’s critical and commercial hit, “In the Next Room, or the vibrator play,” which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize — explores the devotional tradition while touching on homosexuality, anti-Semitism, war and race, a la “Angels in America” (there’s even a flying angel).

There’s a lot going on — hence the play’s three-and-a-half-hour runtime — so if you need some reinforcements, there will be bread and wine served during intermission. Irony optional.

“Passion Play” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. near Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 488-9233], in previews now, opening May 12 and running until May 30. Tickets $22.50-42.50. For info, visit www.irondale.org.

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