The New Yorker Magazine

February 22 - March 1, 1999
by Emily Nunn
photo by Richard Avedon

AT THE THEATRE

UNDERGROUND

SIR ISAAC NEWTON claimed that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and the New York theatre world proves him right. For every Broadway palace, there's an alternative playhouse running on the crazy energy of poverty. For every slick, tourist-approved long run, there's a downtown gem so bright it blinds you to its roughness. And, for every seventy-five-dollar ticket, you can buy three cheap ones, but you've got to brave a southbound train, where anything can happen.

You might bump into Richard Foreman (far left), the prolific father of the avant-garde scene, whose forty-sixth play, "Paradise Hotel," is now on at his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. (David Patrick Kelly, far right, has been his howling mouthpiece more than once.) Maybe you'll find a seat next to the legendary actress Uta Hagen (with her poodle, G.B.), now finishing a sixmonth run in Donald Margulies"'Collected Stories," or next to Ellen Stewart (third from left), the founder of La Mama E.T.C., the city's cutting-edge performance space. The sadder-butwiscr transsexual Hedwig (Michael Cerveris, wigless and in drag), of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," might make you a bit uncomfortable, but the worst she'll do is break your heart. Worry instead about missing"Stop Kiss," a tragicomedy by the up-and-coming playwright Diana Son (in background), or"Symphonic Fantastique," the abstract undcrwatcr puppet ballet by Basil Twist (entering train, upper right). Should you meet with a harsher misfortune, however as dramatized here by the shameless comic actress Amy Sedaris it's always possible that the dashing and enigmatic comedy duo Premium Bob (David Latham, swinging, and Paul Boocock, in pencil-thin mustache) will come to the rescue.

New York City, January 8,1999.

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