brief encounters #7: a shimmering, serendipitous day

A tasty twi-ny day concluded with some Memphis Seoul (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Serendipity!” Gus calls out in the world premiere of Talking Band’s absolutely delightful Shimmer and Herringbone, a play in which characters keep bumping into people they know in a clothing shop.

It’s been quite a while since I had what my wife, Ellen, refers to as a “twi-ny day,” where I wander through the city with only a partial plan and let things more or less naturally occur, serendipitously. While I don’t believe in a perfect day, no matter what Lou Reed says (“It’s such fun / just a perfect day”), I’m all for Bill Withers’s conception of a lovely day (“Just one look at you / and I know it’s gonna be / a lovely day”).

I’ve been out of town several weekends recently and fallen behind in my theater reviews, finding less time to visit museums and take in other city events. I’ve seen more than sixty shows since February 1, which is both exhilarating and exhausting, because I am writing about all but one of them, with more to come this month.

Not that I’m complaining or looking for a wee bit of sympathy; I thoroughly enjoy doing what I do, but so much theater can get overwhelming without art, music, dance, film, and other types of fun added to the mix. Oh, and doing nothing can be pretty cool as well.

And then came Saturday, May 4.

I was already set to do a bunch of writing before going out to see two plays, a matinee in SoHo and an evening performance on the Lower East Side.

I slept until 9:29, then took a long, relaxing bath; I use Mr. Bubble, but I pretend to be in that old commercial for bath powder in which a fed-up woman declares, “Calgon, take me away.”

In my red robe, I finished and posted reviews of four plays. I got dressed and took the M15 local down Second Ave. to Houston, where I got off and, seeing no line at Yonah Schimmel — or is it Shimmel, as the front window and sign spell it both ways — picked up a chocolate cheese knish.

Since I had time — the play was on Wooster St. at 3:00 — I headed to Freemans Alley, the narrow dead end with tons of ever-changing graffiti and an art gallery. I moseyed inside Candice Madey’s new outpost at 1 Freeman Alley (their other gallery is nearby at 1 Rivington) and checked out Nigerian-born, London-based Richard Ayodeji Ikhide’s “Ties That Bind with Time,” which had opened the night before.

I was impressed with the exhibit and spoke with gallery director Jake Borndal, who told me that Ikhide and his wife had just had a baby a few days before. The show, on view through June 15, consists of five fantastical large-scale watercolor, gouache, and collaged paintings on paper focused on a central character named Emiomo.

I then went over to the Rivington space; as I was looking at J. A. Feng’s “Home Bodies,” I heard two people talking about the other show and quickly realized that it was Madey and Ikhide, discussing his schedule as he prepared to return to London. I asked if Ikhide wouldn’t mind doing a quick interview, and they both enthusiastically said yes, so Madey led us to a back room.

Dramatically cool in black leather, Ikhide shared his exhilaration about this period of his life, often flashing an infectious smile. I suggested we go back to the Freemans Alley gallery so I could take some pictures of him for the article, and he heartily agreed. However, I checked the time: It was 2:53. I had seven minutes to get from Rivington between Bowery and Chrystie to Wooster, a seemingly unlikely prospect.

I apologized and started running west, moving fast between the crowded sidewalk and the cobblestone streets on my way to catch the Wooster Group’s new production of Richard Foreman’s Symphony of Rats at the Performing Garage at 333 Wooster. I pride myself on never having missed a performance because of lateness — except in one recent case, when my wife and I were trapped with other straphangers on a downtown 5 train that wouldn’t open its doors at Bowling Green, forcing us to stay on the train as it circled around to go uptown, dropping us off at a station where there was no downtown service at all. Even though we then hopped an Uber to Brooklyn, we arrived about fifteen minutes after curtain, and we were not allowed in because the theater’s (understandable) policy is to not admit critics once the show has begun.

Rather impressed by my stamina, I hurried up Wooster, through the 100s and low 200s — and reached the end of the street. WTF? I pulled out my phone — it was past three o’clock — and discovered that the theater is at 33 Wooster, not 333, so I had to run all the way back to where I had been, a mere couple of blocks from my ultimate destination.

Now I was even more upset, since I probably would have made it if I hadn’t gone off in the wrong direction, something I do constantly, even if I’ve been to that particular theater before. (I do much better with numbered streets and avenues.) Oh, did I mention that I also had to take a massive leak?

The Wooster Group revisits Richard Foreman’s avant-garde Symphony of Rats (photos © Spencer Ostrander)

Huffing and puffing, I finally made it to the Performing Garage just as a man I’ve talked to there before was closing the door. He let me in — I clearly wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom — and I stumbled up the steps to find a seat; the only one I saw was in the last row, so I hustled over to it. I put a mask on so everyone wouldn’t be able to hear my heavy breathing and coughing, and the door closer pointed to me to let me know that they had a reserved seat for me down low. With the sold-out crowd looking at me, I shook my head, saying I was okay where I was. A minute later the show started, another unpredictable and fabulously inventive multidisciplinary absurdist play that is difficult to describe but fascinating and satisfying, starring one of my favorite actors, Jim Fletcher, who I interviewed in 2020.

The show was only seventy-five minutes, so I made it through, but afterward I went straight to the loo, where I bumped into playwright Sara Farrington, author of The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde, which includes discussions with Foreman and Rats codirector and Wooster Group cofounder Kate Valk, among many others. Sara and I were then greeted by her husband, playwright and director Reid Farrington, who I interviewed in 2011. Reid and Sara — who, it turns out, first met at the Performing Garage, when Sara was an intern there, “back in the day before you’d get in trouble for that,” she told us — have collaborated on numerous cutting-edge multimedia projects over the years, from CasablancaBox and BrandoCapote to The Return and others. Sara’s latest play, A Trojan Woman, had its world premiere in Athens, Greece, last year and moves to Nyack next.

Ellen was waiting for me outside the theater, and we continued hanging out with Reid and Sara, then got the chance to say hello to Fletcher, who is also a member of Richard Maxwell’s New York City Players, another unique and extraordinary troupe.

A few moments later, Ellen and I went next door to the Drawing Center for the beautiful “Joan Jonas: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” exhibit, consisting of more than three hundred drawings of the title subjects (dogs, snakes, fish, rabbits, seahorses, shells, leaves, whales, birds) from the 1960s to today, in watercolor, oil pastel, marker, charcoal, ink, and colored pencil. It’s an unexpected treat from Jonas, the eighty-seven-year-old lifelong New Yorker whose current MoMA survey, “Good Night Good Morning,” focuses on her installations, avant-garde performances, and experimental videos. (Jonas herself will be at MoMA May 16–20 and June 25.)

We had some time to kill before going to Mabou Mines@122CC for Shimmer and Herringbone, so we randomly sauntered into Pi Bakerie, a Greek café on Broome St., for some delicious pistachio and chocolate baklava. After that leisurely break, we made our way to First and Ninth for the third part of Talking Band’s fiftieth anniversary season; I had previously seen the wonderful plays The Following Evening at PAC NYC and Existentialism at La MaMa.

As we slid into our row, a man called me by name and said hello. I looked up and wasn’t sure who he was. He resembled a composer I know named Nick, so I reached out my hand cheerfully, but it turned out that the only reason he knew my name was because it was typed out on paper on our seats. (It’s general admission, but critics often get reserved seats, like the one I ended up not using earlier at the Performing Garage.)

His name was Tom Block, a playwright and founding executive director of the International Human Rights Art Movement, a nonprofit that hosts an annual festival, gives out literary awards, and publishes books and magazines. Somehow he brought up Austin Pendleton, a hero to both of us, so I told him about the wide-ranging two-part interview I had just done with the octogenarian actor, director, teacher, and writer.

Melanie (Tina Shepard), Colin (Jack Wetherall), and Lilly (Lizzie Olesker) wonder about pigeons and life in Shimmer and Herringbone (photo by Maria Baranova)

Shimmer and Herringbone soon started, an exquisite tale of old friends, former lovers, and not-so-strangers running into one another at a rather magical clothing store; my meeting Tom would have fit right in with the plot. After the show was over, I congratulated Zimet on yet another success.

Ellen and I went to the restaurant where we wanted to have dinner, but the wait was too long, so we instead ordered takeout from Memphis Seoul; I got the fried catfish sandwich, and Ellen got barbecued jackfruit. Walking to the bus, we saw several of the actors from Shimmer and told them how much we enjoyed the show.

Memphis Seoul was the capper to a serendipitous day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

We brought the food home and ate it while watching television and playing referee for our battling cats.

It might not have been a perfect day, but it was a lovely day, the best twi-ny day I had had in a long time.

And through it all, the Yonah Schimmel chocolate cheese knish survived, becoming lunch on Sunday.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]