Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Avant-garde theater, uptown: Xhloe and Natasha debut Off-Broadway in AND THEN THE RODEO BURNED DOWN, Julia May Jonas’s A WOMAN AMONG WOMEN returns

• By drediman
• June 6, 2026
• No Comments

Currently on the boards Off-Broadway are two decidedly avant-garde works that have found their way uptown to poke and prod decidedly more mainstream audiences. More specifically, these are Lincoln Center Theater remounting Julia May Jonas’s A Woman Among Women, which I originally saw way out at the Bushwick Starr in 2024, and the official Off-Broadway debut of Edinburgh Fringe Festival darlings Xhloe and Natasha in their piece And Then the Rodeo Burned Down courtesy of the adventurous folks over at Ars Nova. As usual, read on for my thoughts.

AND THEN THE RODEO BURNED DOWN
Ars Nova
Through July 2

Over at Ars Nova, Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland — better known simply as Xhloe and Natasha — are starring in souped up mounting of And Then The Rodeo Burned Down (RECOMMENDED), a rabbit hole of a show that scored the New York-based performance artists another hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In essence, the piece depicts the travails of Dale (played by Xhloe), a rodeo clown in pursuit of ascending to the status of an actual cowboy. Through it all, he’s prodded by his own shadow Barnaby (played by Natasha, who also portrays a variety of other characters, including a bull named Arnold), who acts as a sort of cynical sounding board for Dale’s existential crisis. Metaphorically speaking, Xhloe and Natasha seem to be investigating the paralyzing struggles involved in successfully attaining a life in the arts, including the personal and financial sacrifices one has to make in order in the pursuit. It must be noted that theatergoers looking for a tangible narrative to grasp on to should be warned that suggestive, ever-evolving subtext rules in the looping phantasmagorical fantasia the duo have conjured. Being longtime artistic partners, it’s no surprise that the two exhibit extraordinary chemistry. Together, they have an uncanny way of counteracting absurdity with genuine heart/heartbreak. Well-versed in the clowning tradition and the rigors of physical theater, both work with instinctual synchronicity as they dive headlong into an impressively precise display of theme and variation, obsessive behavior, and stylized interactions. There’s also a fascinating element of queerness and mounting sense of menace that pervades the piece as it explores the claustrophobic notions of masculinity and American culture. Suffice to say, at only 70 minute in length, And Then The Rodeo Burned Down is a simultaneously exhausting and invigorating theatrical exercise. Under the co-direction of Tom Costello, Xhloe and Natasha have outdone themselves by surrounding themselves with an immersive, meticulously designed production — kudos particularly to the lighting and sound design (which includes carefully manipulated cuts of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”) — that drops audiences right into a combustible rodeo ring, complete with a popcorn stand.

A WOMAN AMONG WOMEN
Lincoln Center Theater / LCT3 at the Claire Tow Theater
Through June 28

feel of an ensemble piece

This past week, I also had the chance to catch LCT3’s remount of the Bushwick Starr and New Georges’ co-production of Julia May Jonas’s A Woman Among Women (RECOMMEDED), a loose adaptation of Arthur Miller’s classic 1946 play All My Sons (e.g., this time around, the ethics of a family/community matriarch come into question). But look more closely, and you’ll find that there are far more interesting things brewing than simple one-for-one updates, which enables the play to engages in a truly fascinating dialogue with the Miller warhorse. Specifically, the moral dilemma at the core of the play has shifted (no spoilers here!), propelling the characters into far murkier territory than in Miller’s largely black-and-white worldview, which ends in a hard Greek tragedy-like fall from grace. In Jonas’s play, audiences are asked to more critically mull the play’s arguments in their heads, resulting in a more robust and telling dissection of the gender switch at the heart of the play. Throughout, Jonas presents fully realized characters and relationships, often times requiring that viewers lean in and actively process each moment. Indeed, the lack of exposition (which I suspect is intentional) often makes it seem like you’re being dropped in the midst of a much larger tapestry of human stories. As you piece things together, tensions — many of them non-verbal — become increasingly evident, thankfully without having to be telegraphed by histrionic confrontations. Director Sarah Cameron Hughes has given A Woman Among Women a laidback, communal staging that harkens back to David Cromer’s revelatory 2009 revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. However, on its journey uptown to Lincoln Center, the production has become tad more formal, losing some of the organic playfulness that distinguished the previous Brooklyn run . Altogether, the play registers more Chekhov than Miller — only reinforced by the production’s ensemble-driven sensibility, which casually incorporates song and underscoring, often to beguiling effect. Less successful, however, is its confounding incorporation of choreography, a decision that left me scratching my head. Across the board, the cast is fantastic. Invariably, they give pointed, beautifully shaped performances that come across both heightened yet deeply rooted in each character’s respective truths.