Novenas for a Lost Hospital

B-

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is presenting the world premiere of this ambitious environmental piece by Cusi Cram celebrating the 161 years of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village and mourning its closure to make way for expensive condominiums. The evening begins in the courtyard of St. John’s-in-the-Village Church with a prologue that combines ritual ablution, chants, instrumental music and dance. The audience then moves next door to the Rattlestick space which has been configured with pews on three sides surrounding an array of hospital privacy screens displaying moments from the hospital’s long history. Each attendee receives an electric votive candle for use later in the evening. During the play proper, we meet Elizabeth Seton (Kathleen Chalfant), who founded the order that opened the hospital, two nuns who served there during the early years and an early surgeon. We also meet two nurses and a doctor from the hospital’s later years when it became a major care center for AIDS patients, as well as Lazarus (Ken Barnett), a patient who miraculously survives two near-death experiences, and JB (Justin Genna), a talented choreographer, who meet in the AIDS ward and become a couple. There are assorted other characters from various periods in the hospital’s history. The play draws parallels between the hospital’s role in the cholera epidemic of the 1840s and during the AIDS crisis. There are recriminations over the series of terrible decisions that led to the hospital’s closure and a lament over the impermanence of all things in New York City. The evening concludes with a ceremonial march past the new condos to the nearby NYC Aids Memorial where the votive candles are deposited. It’s a noble attempt to pay tribute to an important part of local history. The narrative is perhaps too ambitious in the number of stories it tells and runs a bit too long. The story of Pierre Toussaint (Alvin Keith), a freed slave who becomes an important NYC philanthropist, while fascinating, does not seem to be integral to the hospital’s history. Nevertheless, it all makes for an unusual evening and is to be commended for offering something different. Furthermore, it’s always a treat to see Ms. Chalfant onstage. I am not sure how much interest it holds for those who do not live in the Village and those who were not touched directly or indirectly by the AIDS crisis. Rattlestick artistic director Daniella Topol directed. Running time: two hours 20 minutes.

Summer Shorts - Series A ** C

The Festival of New American Short Plays is celebrating its 10th year with two series of three plays each at 59E59 Theater. The three plays in Series A, performed without intermission, last barely 80 minutes. 

“The Helpers” by Cusi Cram, presents two characters, a retired psychiatrist (Maggie Burke) and a former patient (David Deblinger), who meet on a bench in Greenwich Village on a cold winter day to settle some unfinished business. It’s a brief character sketch that doesn’t go very deep. The acting is adequate as is the direction by Jessi D. Hill.

Neil LaBute is back again this year with “After the Wedding,” in which a husband and wife (Frank Harts and Elizabeth Masucci) who have been married 5 or 6 years, face the audience in separate pools of light and engage in two overlapping monologues that start by relating amusing bits about their marriage but end up telling about a tragic event that occurred at the start of their honeymoon which they have tried hard to avoid thinking about. Since this is LaBute, there is some sexual content. The actors are convincing and Maira Mileaf’s direction is smooth. 

“This Is How It Ends” by A. Rey Pamatmat, by far the longest of the three plays, is an unwieldy absurdist look at the end of the world as seen by a gay man Jake (Chinaza Uche), Annie (Kerry Warren), the roommate he found on Craigslist  who reveals that she is really the Antichrist and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Death (Nadine Malouf), Famine (Rosa Gilmore), Pestilence (Sathya Sridharan) and War (Patrick Cummings). It turns out that the latter two are a downlow item. The plot is too disjointed to make much sense although director Ed Sylvanus Iskander (“The Mysteries” at The Flea) bravely tries.

The simple set by Rebecca Lord-Surratt features a back wall of louvred panels that swivel to reveal a smooth surface for projections on the reverse side. The costumes by Amy Sutton for the Four Horsemen are quite amusing. 

All in all, it was not a very satisying program. Before the first play, there was an interesting stop-motion short film of the crew assembling the set. The start was delayed for ten minutes by an argument over a seat between a man in a wheelchair and a woman with a walker that forced the house manager to intervene and got a round of applause from the audience when calm was restored. Would that the plays had been equally involving.