Public Theater

Theater review by Raven SnookThe path to greatness is paved with blood, sushi and tears in Sumo, Lisa Sanaye Dring’s hearty new play about Japan’s spiritually infused national pastime. The relatively diminutive Akio (a winning Scott Keiji Takeda) is a lowly newcomer at an elite Tokyo training facility. He’s stuck doing menial work and desperate to get a shot in the sumo ring himself, but he faces hefty competition from other wrestlers in the stable—particularly the disdainful highest-ranked fighter, Mitsuo (a quietly intimidating David Shih), who abuses and dismisses him. Anyone who's ever seen a sports movie knows what comes next. That seems to be by design: Dring transports a traditional hero's-journey plot to a setting that is rarely seen in American theatre, which gives it some freshness without taking it too far afield from the familiar. The ferocious sumo matches—fight-directed by James Yaegashi and Chelsea Pace, and choreographed to Shih-Wei Wu's live taiko drumming—get your blood pumping. Paul Whitaker's lighting is appropriately dramatic; Hana S. Kim's eye-popping projections set the scene and fill in cultural gaps, as do three Shinto priests who serve as narrators. Sumo | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus None of the actors have the sheer mass of authentic sumo greats, but they pull more than their weight. Director Ralph B. Peña elicits substantial performances from the entire cast of the production, which is presented jointly by Ma-Yi Theater Company and the...

This ensemble play by Abe Koogler (Fulfillment Center), about nature lovers in the Pacific Northwest investigating the disappearance of an orca pod, was a highlight of the 2023 Summerworks festival. Now Clubbed Thumb brings it back for a longer encore run at the Public, directed once again by Arin Arbus (Waiting for Godot). Returning original cast members—including Crystal Finn, Jan Leslie Harding, Armando Riesco and stage treasure Maryann Plunkett (The Notebook)—are joined by newbies Miriam Silverman, Mia Katigbak, Arnie Burton, Ryan King and Carmen Zilles.

Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine) is among the finest, strangest and most wonderful playwrights in the English language, so it's always a treat to get something new from her. This time it's a quartet of mostly short experimental works that debuted to acclaim at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2019 and 2021: Glass, about a girl made of, you guessed it, glass; Kill, a monologue for the bloodstained Gods of Olympus; What If If Only, in which a grieving man receives a strange visitation; and the longest piece, Imp, in which an elderly woman threatens to unleash a magical spirit in a bottle. Churchill's frequent collaborator James Macdonald (Escaped Alone) directs.

The fabulous Amber Iman, who most recently dazzled in Broadway's short-lived Lempicka, plays a Kenyan musical deity on the prowl at an Afro-jazz nightclub in this original musical conceived and directed by the Public's resident Saheem Ali, with a book by Jocelyn Bioh (Jaja's African Hair Braiding) and songs by the composer and former Late Show bassist Michael Thurber. Iman originated her role—the goddess Marimba, masquerading as a singer named Nadira—in the show's 2022 premiere at Berkeley Rep; her co-stars this time are Austin Scott as a sax pistol who strikes Nadira's fancy, Destinee Rea as his fiancée and J Paul Nicholas as the father who wants him to go into the family business: politics. The choreography is by Darrell Grand Moultrie, and Nick Rashad Burroughs and Arica Jackson play the comic second couple.