Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – UNDER THE RADAR 2026 Roundup, Part 2: Still marveling at the breadth and sheer invention of the theatrical treats on display

• By drediman
• January 29, 2026
• No Comments

Over the past week or so, I marched forward with my full tilt Under the Radar immersion, during which I continued to marvel at the breadth and sheer invention on display of the shows under the auspices of the city’s flagship experimental theater festival. Read on for my thoughts on this second batch of treats in this anything goes theatrical sandbox, many of which bravely basked in the grey matter that is so central to the human experience but is often left un-investigated.

2021 (Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, and Sam Ferguson)
Mitu580

Over at Mitu580 in Brooklyn, Guilty By Association‘s production of 2021 (RECOMMENDED) piqued my interest solely by virtue of its written description. A technological séance of sorts, the unique performance seeks to bring back to “life” Brian, the polarizing real life father of Cole Lewis, one of the show’s creators. To accomplish this daunting task, Lewis and her collaborators — programmer Patrick Blenkarn and sound designer Sam Ferguson — unite improvisational/theatrical storytelling and vintage adventure video gaming, in the process asking audiences to contemplate the commonalities between human conscience/memory and computer programming/artificial intelligence (a stretch, to be frank). The performance is hosted by Lewis and Blenkarn — both cool and collected — who guide one or a few audience member(s) as they embark on a video game quest that loosely mirrors Brian’s hazy final days, which has been pieced together based on the fragments of information at the creators’ disposal. Your level of frustration with the piece will likely rely heavily on the skill level of the participant who takes the reins. Luckily at the performance I attended, that person moved things along expertly — with verbal input from Lewis and the audience at large — thereby mostly minimizing most of the potential lulls and dead ends in the “storytelling”. Despite these built-in setbacks and the attempts at making connections that seem a bit far-flung (particularly given the analog aesthetic of the endeavor), 2021 wonderfully showcases the spirit of experimentation — both in form and content — that lies at the heart of Under the Radar.

ALL THAT FALL (by Samuel Beckett, directed by JoAnne Akalitis)
Mabou Mines

As part of the festival, legendary downtown theater director JoAnne Akalaitis helmed Mabou Mines’ meticulously designed and executed production of All That Fall (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), Samuel Beckett’s obsessively sonic — and depending on the production, visual — meditation on the trials, desolation, and absurdities of human existence. In short, the work centers around one Maddy Rooney, an Irish woman of a certain age whose trip to the train station to meet her blind husband Dan turns into an existential examination of her life. This is my third time stepping into the world of this relatively rarely-mounted play; I encountered it once with Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon in a relatively straightforward “staged reading” rendition directed by Trevor Nunn, and another time via Pan Pan Theatre’s more abstract experience that leaned in on the sonic aspect of the piece (Beckett originally wrote it as a radio play, after all). Akalitis lands somewhere between those two interpretations, relying on a large-scale, detailed diorama of a small town (designed by Thomas Dunn), some poetic lighting (courtesy of Jennifer Tipton), and evocative photography (by Jeri Coppola) to act as our visual entrée into the playwright’s stark yet darkly humorous imagination. But as elaborate as these are, they are merely accessories to the world of sound created by Bruce Odland’s enveloping soundscape — the rainstorm and passing trains were particularly theater-shaking — and the arch and deliciously expressive (albeit recorded) performances delivered by the cast.

DARKMATTER (Cherish Menzo)
Performance Space New York

Just two floors above Mabou Mines’ performance space, I also had the opportunity to attend Performance Space New York’s presentation of Cherish Menzo’s D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER (RECOMMENDED), a willfully abstract dance theater piece that re-conceives the Black body. Throughout this surreal fever dream of a production, there are hallucinatory nods to science fiction, contemporary dance, and art installation, collectively casting a moody, neo-noir spell. The choreography is a twisted riff on hip-hop dance that occasionally breaks the fourth wall, bringing a level of uncomfortable immersion to the onlookers’ experience and forcing us to engage as if participants in the ritual before us. As the work unfolds, Menzo and onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés — who both take on simultaneously alien yet utterly human personas — play with our perceptions of time and space as they artfully depict a sort of torturned evolution as Black beings in the world. I suggest not exerting too much effort into extracting concrete meaning from D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, instead simply letting its subconscious-driven phantasmagoria seep into your psyche. Although some episodes are certainly more compelling than others — the piece ultimately loses some steam in its final stretch — I applaud Menzo’s effort to express complex matters within her that words can only scratch the surface of articulating.

ULYSSES (Elevator Repair Service)
The Public Theater

I’m still mulling over Elevator Repair Service’s masterful and exuberantly freewheeling stage adaptation of James Joyce’s notoriously impenetrable novel Ulysses (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which continues its run at The Public Theater. In short, ERS’s fearless — and frankly, peerless — brand of ensemble-based theater-making may have just cracked this hard yet seductive literary nut. Set in Dublin, the sprawling novel chronicles a single day (June 16, 1904, to be exact) in the lives of Leopold Bloom (played with wonderful vaudevillian flair by Vin Knight), Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom. Unlike the company’s legendary completist production of Gatz — an eight-hour theatrical marathon that utters ever word, verbatim, of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal Jazz Age novel The Great Gatsby — ERS’s Ulysses excises vast chunks of Joyce’s text (seemingly selected at random), fast-forwarding through the novel haphazardly and with dizzying regularity, producing explosions of supercharged theatrical zaniness that compliment the nonsensical, nearly stream-of-conscience passages of Joyce’s rambling prose and dialogue. The end result is not so much profound as it is illuminating of human frailties, recognizing our often ridiculous contradictions, annoyingly short memories, and capacity for disregard. Additionally, the folks at ERS unflinchingly if quirkily embrace the work’s obsession with our instinctual and animalistic tendencies, particularly its frank sensuality and depictions of unfiltered desire. Throughout, impressive rigor underlies the production’s thrilling sense of play and its ability to exist within the vitality of each moment.

THE VISITORS (Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company)
PAC NYC

Also set to continue beyond Under the Radar’s festival timeframe is Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Jane Harrison‘s First Nations play The Visitors (RECOMMENDED) at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Manhattan’s Financial District (referred to by many as simply “PAC NYC”). Set in Sydney Harbor in 1788, Jane Harrison‘s carefully researched First Nations play is a theatrical depiction of the Aboriginal leaders’ response to the large scale arrival of British ships on their shores. Combining elements of Reginald Rose‘s classic courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men (in its depiction of the democratic process) and Stephen Sondheim’s underrated musical “Pacific Overtures” (in its nuanced exploration of the impact of colonialism), the compact and to-the-point one act play successfully conjures urgency and a sense of history artfully transpiring in real time before our eyes. Given its linear narrative and discernible characters (with distinct motivations), Harrison’s idea- and debate-driven play is perhaps the most traditional, predictable, and therefore unlikely of any of this January’s Under the Radar offerings. It’s radical in its own way, however. Although director Wesley Enoch’s understandably static ensemble production is presented in a way that’s accessible and modern — particularly in terms of speech and costuming — its characters refreshingly maintain the philosophical grounding and moral values that underlie the Aboriginal nation leaders’ attempt to convince their colleagues of the merits of their respective reasoning and thought processes. And despite attending the first preview, the performances were already polished and confident.

WATCH ME WALK (Anne Gridley)
Soho Rep

Finally, over at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Hell’s Kitchen, we have Anne Gridley’s Watch Me Walk (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which comes to Under the Radar courtesy of Soho Rep (this is another production that’s scheduled to continue performances after the festival’s conclusion). In essence, the work is a scathingly clear-eyed yet somehow compassionate theatrical meditation on disability — as an adult, Gridley was diagnosed with a rare form of hereditary spastic paraplegia — as well as family and inheritance. Gridley is a founding member of the renowned avant-garde theater troupe Nature Theater of Oklahoma and has appeared in a number of important thought and boundary pushing projects over the years. As such, it isn’t surprising that she’s brought similar rigor and curiosity to her very candid autobiographical show, a knotted concoction comprised of emotionally naked confessionals, caustic musical theater numbers, and ironic teach-ins (largely as it relates to her physical condition and familial history). The interesting thing about her case is that the symptoms only made themselves apparent later in life, imbuing her account with a heightened sense of loss and tragedy. Indeed, as she comes to terms with her condition — vis-à-vis memories of her physically vigorous former self — unapologetic rage and pointed humor intertwine, sometimes awkwardly for us audience members, which is probably by design. I get the feeling that Gridley wants to make us feel as uncomfortable as she does as a disabled person in living in the world. Throughout, there’s an element of chance regarding how certain lines will land, but that’s part of what makes the piece so alive. If the pacing occasionally flags under Eric Ting’s direction, this can easily be fixed — especially with a performer and artist as intelligent and fierce as Gridley at the helm.