Broadway Review—Jeff Ross in “Take the Banana for a Ride”

Take the Banana for a Ride

Written and performed by Jeff Ross

Directed by Stephen Kessler

Performances through September 28, 2025

Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, NYC

jeffrossbroadway.com

Jeff Ross in Take a Banana for the Ride (photo: Emilio Madrid)

If you thought comic Jeff Ross, best known as the Roastmaster General who’s made brutal fun of celebrities for years on Comedy Central roasts, would come to Broadway with his insult flag flying, you might be surprised by Take the Banana for a Ride (yes, he explains the offbeat title). Sure, Ross spits out some blisteringly nasty remarks—and even shows an over-the-top putdown of both Sandra Bernhard and Bea Arthur, from a long-ago televised roast, before he takes the stage—but keeps them to a minimum, considering his reputation. Banana instead is an autobiographical tale of how his family life in Newark put him on the path to standup comedy.

Ross grew up as Jeffrey Lifschultz, saying that his last name “is an old Hebrew word. It means, ‘Hey, you ought to change that’.” Working in his dad’s restaurant, Ross says that he got his work ethic from both parents. For 90 minutes, Ross spins an entertaining yarn that’s often hilarious and even, at times, poignant. But for such a tart-tongued performer, Ross often gets sentimental discussing his family, close friends and even the German Shepherds he adopted during the pandemic—and whom he jokingly named Ausch and Schwitz—even getting the audience to bark a collective “Aw!” when he brings one of his pups onstage.

There are sharp jokes scattered throughout as Ross reminisces about his mother, dad and grandfather, “Pop Jack,” with whom Jeff lived while trying to break into the comedy world. The show’s title comes from Pop Jack, who, Ross says, would give him a banana when Ross went into the city to perform at clubs, saying, “You never know when you’ll need one, so take the banana for a ride. You never know what’s going to happen: you might get stuck in traffic, you might need some potassium, you might need it for low blood sugar—and in a pinch you could use it as a dildo or if you get sad, turn it sideways: it’ll remind you to smile.” 

He candidly admits that bananas can get mushy inside, and a few times during a show where Ross skirts sappiness, I admit I wanted to hear him go off on a roasting tangent. But that’s not what he’s going for with this performance—he had a close call when he was recently diagnosed with cancer, and he also lost several close comedy friends: namely, Norm McDonald, Gilbert Gottfried and Bob Saget. Director Stephen Kessler helps pace what is essentially a long monologue adroitly—photos and videos are displayed on the screen behind Ross, while pianist Asher Denburg and violinist Felix Herbst accompany Ross with well-chosen musical selections and often amusing song interludes.

Ross does provide a bit of his penchant for insult comedy at the end, when he roams up and down the aisles chatting with audience members, giving them a cutting comment or two and handing them a banana for being good sports. Take the Banana for a Ride might not convert non-fans, but Ross’ observational comedy does successfully transfer to Broadway.

September '25 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Jurassic World—Rebirth 

(Universal)

The latest chapter in the Jurassic Park franchise is less risible that its immediate predecessors, and the storyline (David Koepp, who penned the first two Spielberg-Crichton films, is back as screenwriter) is not as ludicrous as it might have been. Of course, the main premise of Gareth Edwards’ film is, as always, people getting close enough to dinosaurs to become dinner (or almost), but the tension is ratcheted up effectively and the actors—with the exception of Scarlett Johansson, who tries hard but is rarely convincing—are decent enough to watch for two hours of maulings and other thrills. The heavily CGIed visuals are impressive on 4K; extras are an hour-long making-of, featurettes, gag reel, deleted scenes, alternate opening and two commentaries.

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Baltimorons 

(IFC Films)

This sometimes amusing but unbelievably slender rom-com stars its cowriter Michael Strassner as a failed standup who, through various wince-inducing contrivances, ends up with divorced dentist Didi (Liz Larsen) on Christmas Eve. Director and cowriter Jay Duplass hits every obvious note right from the opening Peanuts version of “O Christmas Tree,” with the nadir a long, inert comedy club sequence where the pair starts to fall for each other. Strassner and Larsen are certainly game, but what might have been a satisfying short has been expanded to an interminable 100 minutes.

Democracy Noir 

(Clarity Films)

It’s a difficult moment for democracies across the world, with the rise of right-wing authoritarianism in Europe and in the U.S. Director Connie Field’s timely portrait of how one of Trump’s heroes, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, has readily and easily dismantled his country’s democratic norms is a reminder of these scary times and a hopeful glimpse at resistance. Field urgent chronicles how three brave women attempt to sound the alarm on the corruption and lies happening right out in the open in their beloved homeland, with the implication that democracy is hanging by a thread in other places as well (hint hint).

Four Nights of a Dreamer 

(Janus Films)

Legendary French auteur Robert Bresson (1901-99) made many masterpieces, from Diary of a Country Priest and Pickpocket to Balthasar and L’Argent, but this 1971 romantic drama—little-seen for decades, which might account for the unaccountably positive reception of this restored version—is not one of them. Based on a Dostoyevsky story, this modern transposition follows a couple that meets when painter Jacques rescues Marthe from jumping off the Pont-Neuf bridge after her lover doesn’t return as he promised. Then comes 80 meandering minutes between them until she returns to her lover when he finally returns Too bad Guillaume des Forêts as the artist is as wooden as Isabelle Weingarten is ravishing as the heroine. Bresson does play around effectively with a tape recorder and Parisian nights glisten thanks to Pierre Lhomme’s luminous camerawork, but the film is as big a misfire as Bresson’s The Devil, Probably.

A Little Prayer 

(Music Box Films)

In Angus MacLachlan’s sensitive drama, David Strathairn gives a towering performance as Bill, a pious businessman in a small Southern town, who bonds with daughter-in-law Tammy after realizing his son David (Will Pullen) might be having an affair with an employee. MacLachlan’s film is filled with bracing moments that are never overstated or sentimentalized; the family dynamics are sympathetically observed, and the central relationship between Bill and Tammy is enacted trenchantly by Strathairn and the wonderful Jane Levy. This small-scale gem hints at the interiorized dramas of Terrence Malick without ever becoming slavishly imitative.

A Savage Art—The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant 

(Magnolia Pictures)

The great political cartoonist, Australian-born Pat Oliphant, has been drawing unique and cutting cartoons for decades, and Bill Banowsky’s illuminating documentary provides a broad overview of his life, career and how he creates his brilliant caricatures and his beloved character, Punk the penguin, who speaks truths from the corner of each drawing. Interviews with colleagues and his children—along with the master himself—give a fully-formed portrait of an idiosyncratic talent, with glimpses of dozens of his seminal, eye-opening cartoons, from Kennedy to Obama (too bad he retired before Trump rose up). 

Stranger Eyes 

(Film Movement)

In Singaporean writer-director Yeo Siew Hua’s unsettling drama, the aftermath of a child gone missing is potently dissected, as the young girl’s estranged parents discover that their everyday lives are being surreptitiously recorded and they are convinced that the person performing the surveillance also abducted their daughter. The director’s misdirection, to coin a phrase, is fitting for a film about voyeurism in our connected digital age, and his refusal to turn this into a mere redo of something like Hitchcock’s Rear Window or Michael Haneke’s Cache—both of which it superficially resembles—is all to the good.

The Threesome 

(Vertical)

What starts as an intriguingly offbeat comedy-drama about the repercussions of a drunken menage a trois among Connor, his former squeeze Olivia and Jenny, a new woman he just met quickly devolves into an often enervating soap opera, particularly when Connor, superman that he is, impregnates both women. Some may find it cute to watch these shenanigans, especially when both babies are about to be delivered and Connor runs back and forth between Olivia’s and Jenny’s hospital rooms like a bad slapstick comedy, but even with nicely-turned performances by Zoey Deutch (Olivia), Jonah Hauer-King (Connor) and Ruby Cruz (Jenny), director Chad Hartigan and writer Ethan Ogilby’s film seems like an afterthought.

CD Release of the Week 

Shostakovich—Chamber Music 

(Capriccio)

One of the most prolific classical composers, the great Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) wrote much extraordinary and some ordinary music in many genres, from vocal works to symphonies to operas—it was Stalin’s insistence on an agenda of socialist realism that forced him to create rote pieces of disposable music. Then there are his cycles of 15 string quartets and 15 symphonies that are among the most imposing of the 20th century. This excellent compilation of several recordings made between 2000 and 2005 collects three discs of some of Shostakovich’s signature chamber works, including string quartets 1 and 4, piano sonatas 1 and 2, the masterly piano quintet, 24 preludes for piano and the dark Chamber Symphony, an arrangement of perhaps his greatest chamber work, string quartet No. 8. Several first-class performers, including the Moscow Virtuosi ensemble and the Petersen Quartet, give estimable readings of these imposing works.

Shakespeare in the Park Review—“Twelfth Night” at the Delacorte Theater

Twelfth Night

Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Saheem Ali

Performances through September 14, 2025

Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York, NY

publictheater.org

The cast of Twelfth Night (photo: Joan Marcus)

My first-ever Central Park Shakespeare production was in 1989: Twelfth Night was a star-studded mess with Michelle Pfeiffer as a ravishing Olivia and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio a winning Viola/Cesario, but the rest was a motley crew including Jeff Goldblum, Fisher Stevens and Stephen Collins. Two decades later, Daniel Sullivan’s soggy 2009 Central Park Twelfth Night at least had a wonderful Anne Hathaway as Viola/Cesario; but tentative performances by Raul Esparza as Orsino and Audra McDonald as Olivia dragged it down. And the inconsistent Shaina Taub musicalization, which was at the Delacorte in 2016 and 2018, was anchored by the dynamic Nikki M. James’ Viola/Cesario.

Saheem Ali’s new production of the Bard’s dazzling comedy of errors, mistaken identities and the vagaries of love also introduces a revitalized Delacorte Theater. Actually, the theater doesn’t look much different, as most of the updating was done to the performers’ backstage digs and the amount of machinery needed for scene changes. (And yes, the nearby restrooms have been given a welcomed makeover.)

What’s onstage is the usual clash of acting styles, hit-and-miss directorial interventions and unnecessary additions to Shakespeare’s script that mark this pleasant evening under the stars—a gorgeous New York night like the one at the performance I attended helps compensate for what’s lacking. 

Ali announces his intentions from the start: at the rear of the stage, huge letters spell out the play’s cheeky subtitle, What You Will, wittily created by designer Maruti Evans and illuminated brightly by Bradley King. The cast walks on- and offstage near the letters, and Ali delivers a few visual puns, as when Sir Toby Belch (a memorably sardonic John Ellison Conlee) walks off saying “Ay?” while pointedly looking at the A in WHAT, and Sandra Oh—an otherwise unaffecting Olivia—lounges near the O in YOU. (A later scene where four characters hide behind a tree that is just four letters spelling TREE is far less felicitous.)

Ali has cut the play to 100 minutes sans intermission, which speeds up the action among the various subplots too quickly, muting the comic and dramatic highlights along with Shakespeare’s brilliantly conceived reveal. Of course, the hijinks of Toby, Andrew Aguecheek (a funny but overdone Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Olivia’s maid Maria (a game Daphne Rubin-Vega) take center stage, with extra doses of would-be hilarity the playwright never thought of: Toby even snorts coke during one of their comic binges.

Malvolio, the self-centered servant whose loss of dignity and nervous breakdown can be blamed on the aforementioned trio, is played sharply by Peter Dinklage, although he only rarely approaches Philip Bosco’s unforgettable turn in the role, the highlight of Nicholas Hytner’s waterlogged 1998 Lincoln Center Theater revival. 

But Ali’s most interesting addition—having the separated twins Viola (the charming Lupita Nyong’o) and Sebastian (one-dimensional Junior Nyong’o, Lupita’s brother) speak Swahili as outsiders in Illyria, actual lines from the play—is marred by them sprinkling the Swahili in their dialogue throughout, so when they speak it to each other upon being reunited at the end it’s not as touching as it would have been if we hadn’t heard it several times earlier. 

Turning Feste the clown into a rapping and singing troubadour, and embodied agreeably by Moses Sumney, is a decent idea, while wrapping up the show with a curtain call in which the entire cast is clad in Oana Botez’ sumptuous, eye-catching costumes is something that can only work at the Delacorte. 

August '25 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Honey Don’t 

(Focus Features)

Margaret Qualley is the main reason to see this scattershot, often lamebrained B-movie homage/parody from one-half of the Coen brothers (Ethan, along with cowriting partner, Olivia Cooke) in which she plays Honey O’Donahue, a lesbian private eye in a small town who investigates a case that results in several killings—which are often lasciviously (and pointlessly) dwelt upon by the filmmakers, to their film’s and their heroine’s detriment. Despite Qualley’s immense charm, Honey is as underdeveloped as everyone else in the movie, and attempts to make her offbeat family and romantic relationships authentic come off as desperate. Coen and Cooke just throw everything into the kitchen sink, hoping something interesting, amusing or just plain eccentric will pop out of the inherent silliness. Even able performers like Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day and Chris Evans are reduced to caricature, while the always watchable Qualley can’t even rescue the risibly nonsensical ending.

Diva 

(Rialto Pictures)

Called a dazzling formal exercise by many reviewers on its original 1982 release, Jean-Jacques Beineix’ film about a music lover who records his favorite opera singer in concert then finds himself in the crosshairs of criminals after another tape has always been ludicrous, and what seemed fresh and new four decades ago now comes off as arch and not as clever as it thinks. The acting is variable, the shaggy-dog plotting includes characters that are mere pawns, and the director’s vaunted eye is just a nod toward stylish splashiness with little depth. Strangely, the Beineix films that never made it here (The Moon in the Gutter, Roselyne and the Lions, IP5) are more memorable than Diva and Betty Blue, his other cult hit.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass 

(Kimstim)

The Quay brothers, who are identical twins from Pennsylvania, are the legendary creators of animated shorts and features stretching back decades—this, their first feature in nearly 20 years, is a typically dense and convoluted tale, as its title demonstrates. Based on stories by the challenging Polish formalist Bruno Schulz, this nightmarish Kafkaesque labyrinth contains the brothers’ usual stunning array of foreboding imagery—through their unique combination of live-action and stop-motion—at the service of a bizarre storyline of a man’s visit to a sanatorium where his father is dying and where time itself follows no logical structure.

Suspended Time 

(Music Box Films)

In his film set during the pandemic, French director Olivier Assayas creates an intriguing if slight auto-fiction that parallels his own COVID lockdown as an artist unable to work but also aware that staying with his brother and their girlfriends at their family’s house in rural France is not as bad as others have it. Even though the film is populated by small, domestic disagreements that can blow up into something larger, Assayas’ razor-sharp observational eye—coupled with his witty narration—keeps this from becoming an awkward exercise of navel-gazing. It’s nicely acted by Vincent Macaigne and Micha Lescot (the brothers) and Nora Hamzawi and Nine d’Urso (the girlfriends).

4K Release of the Week 

The Conjuring 

(Warner Bros)

The first film in the ongoing Conjuring series, made in 2013, remains the most satisfying, ably telling the story of the Perrons, a family terrorized by supernatural forces in their home and the real-life Warren couple, demonologists both, who investigate the malevolence inhabiting the home that, in a quite effective climax, provokes an exorcism. There are good performances by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as the Warrens and Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor as the Perron parents, while director James Wan does a creditable job keeping things on track without wallowing in lesser tangents. The UHD transfer looks great; extras include several making-of featurettes. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Route One/USA 

(Icarus Films)

Robert Kramer’s classic road movie that travels along the Eastern Seaboard, following U.S. Route 1 from Maine to Key West, was made in 1989 but remains particularly relevant today, as Kramer chronicles Americans of all walks of life, political persuasions and economic classes, along with visiting landmarks from Walden Pond to D.C.’s Vietnam Memorial. An American expatriate based in Paris (he died in France at age 60 in 1999) who returned to the U.S. to make this film, Kramer adroitly handles the camera while his friend, actor Michael Keillor, does the questioning and observing. This four-hour exploration of the deep and dark crevasses of American life is crammed with incident, detail and insight but is far from exhaustive, mirroring Kramer’s wanting to “understand” the country he left. The film’s graininess really pops on the Blu-ray; the lone extra is a fascinating pendant to the main feature: Looking for Robert, a 2024 documentary portrait of Kramer and his film by colleague Richard Copans.

The Unholy Trinity 

(Warner Bros)

Making a straightforward western today without being Kevin Costner is certainly a rarity, and if director Richard Gray and writer Lee Zacariah have made something less than earthshattering, at least the tale of Henry Broadway, bent on vengeance for his innocent father’s hanging who finds more trouble than he bargained for in the Wild West, is an entertaining 90 minutes. The authentic atmosphere and the solid acting of Pierce Brosnan (Sheriff Gabriel Dove), Brandon Lessard (Henry), Veronica Ferres (the sheriff’s wife) and Samuel Jackson (the bad guy ironically named St. Christopher) contributes to the successful western vibe. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.

August '25 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Eden 

(Vertical Entertainment)

Based on the sordid true story of a group of Europeans moving to an isolated island in the Galapagos in the early 1930s to escape what they see as the decline of civilization only to discover they are also capable of destroying themselves in utopia, Ron Howard’s drama is blunt and often eye-rollingly unsubtle, but the strange goings-on hold interest for two hours along with an array of bizarrely idiosyncratic performances. There’s Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby, intense as the original couple; Daniel Bruehl and Sydney Sweeney, understated as the first visitors to arrive; and Ana de Armas, brazenly scenery-chewing as a self-styled, sexually voracious Baroness. A 2013 documentary, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, covers the same tale but gives the disappearances and deaths a more mysterious air.

Angelheaded Hipster 

(Greenwich Entertainment)

Although Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex are known here solely for the hit “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” in England Bolan was a national treasure, as popular in his early ’70s heyday as Bowie, Elton John and Queen. In keeping with their near-invisibility stateside, Ethan Silverman’s illuminating documentary was made in 2022 and is only getting released—it returns to that moment to show how Bolan’s personality and unique genius bolstered his popularity until his seemingly inevitable early death, at age 35 in a 1980 car crash. Voluminous archival footage, concert clips and interviews present a colorful portrait of a singular artist in rock history.

Checkpoint Zoo 

(Abramorama)

Russia’s unprovoked 2022 invasion of Ukraine has not only put people and property at great risk for the past 3-1/2 years but also countless animals; Joshua Zeman’s wrenching documentary focuses on Feldman Ecopark, an animal refuge near Ukraine’s second-largest city where those in residence needed to be removed from their dangerous location to safer spaces once the invasion began. Zeman also introduces the many brave people, from zoo workers to volunteers, who risk their very lives to try and get the animals to safety, all while the deadly war rages around them. In fact, the most memorable moments of the documentary are the raw footage from the front lines that these same people record for posterity.

The Glassworker 

(Watermelon Pictures)

In the first hand-drawn animated film to be produced entirely in Pakistan, director Usman Riaz has created an often visually stunning if diffuse drama about Vincent, who follows in his father Tomas’ footsteps to become an original glassmaker; he also falls in love with Alliz, a young musician from an army colonel’s family. There’s also a war that kills Alliz’s father and indirectly cripples Tomas; if parts are borderline cheesy and shamelessly sentimental, there’s no denying the mindblowing animation that spectacularly recreates the exacting glassworks. 

My Mother’s Wedding 

(Vertical Entertainment)

Although it’s laudable that Kristin Scott Thomas makes her directorial debut from a script she cowrote with her current husband John Micklethwait based on how her father’s and stepfather’s tragic deaths affected her and her family, the resulting film is a soggy mess, with the director herself playing Diana, marrying for the third time while her grown daughters—Victoria, a famous Hollywood actress; Katherine, a Navy officer; and Georgina, a harried wife and mother—must deal with the heavy emotional baggage of the event and family history. To be sure, some of the acting is excellent, with Sienna Miller particularly effective as the pampered Victoria, Scott Thomas her incandescent self as Diana and Emily Beecham a heartbreaking Georgina, but Scarlett Johannsen is out of her element as Katherine, with a wavering British accent and no chemistry with the charming Frieda Pinto as her lover Jack. 

My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow

This monumental five-hour documentary by director Julia Loktev is an upsetting yet hopeful chronicle of the state of opposition journalists in Russia—specifically, those who, against all odds and with punishment hanging over their heads, counter the party line that Putin is infallible. (According to law, they must admit, in their writings and TV appearances, that they are “foreign agents.”) Anna Nemzer, one of these enterprising and unabashedly brave journalists, codirects, and together she and Loktev have created an urgent time capsule of Russian resistance just before and immediately after Putin’s illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The Burmese Harp

Fires on the Plain 

(Criterion Collection)

Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) made several classics, including An Actor’s Revenge (1963) and Tokyo Olympiad (1964)—both also released by Criterion—but his greatest may be this pair of anti-war dramas that home in on how individual soldiers are forever changed by the insanity of war. The Burmese Harp (1956) follows several prisoners of war in a British labor camp and how their spirituality helps them overcome all odds, while Fires on the Plain (1959) poetically but terrifyingly evokes the complete loss of humanity among a group of soldiers lost inside war’s horrors. Ichikawa was a humanist who was also a realist and his films are a difficult but worthwhile watch. Both films have luminous UHD transfers; extras include interviews with Ichikawa, actors Rentaro Mikuni and Mickey Curtis and an intro by scholar Donald Richie.

The Accountant 2 

(Warner Bros)

Did we really need a sequel to the autistic hitman movie of a few years ago? Apparently so—and, it must be admitted, the second go-round of accountant/killer Christian Wolff’s exploits is more entertaining than the first time. If director Gavin O’Connor takes his sweet time setting things up—and almost losing control during a drawn-out set piece concerning a bus filled with migrant children—the payoff is in the chemistry between Ben Affleck’s Christopher and Jon Bernthal’s Braxton, Christian’s brother and fellow hitman. (How’s that for keeping it in the family?) There are already rumblings that there will be a third chapter, and if they can make it sleeker and swifter (under two hours, please!), I’ll gladly partake. The film looks splendid on UHD.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Donizetti—Roberto Devereaux

(Dynamic)

In this historical opera by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), the real-life tale of England’s Queen Elizabeth I and her favorite, the Earl of Essex, has attractive music and fast-moving—if often fanciful—storytelling. Stephen Langridge’s 2024 staging at Bergamo, Italy’s Donizetti Festival keeps the focus on the central relationship, and the performances of Jessica Pratt (Elisabetta) and John Osborn (Roberto Devereux) are musically and histrionically satisfying. The playing of the Orchestra Donizetti Opera under conductor Riccardo Frizza and singing of the Coro dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala under chorus master Salvo Sgrò are equally fine. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

His Motorbike, Her Island 

(Cult Epics)

Maverick Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) made several films about ordinary young people on the margins of society, and his 1986 drama follows Koh, a biker who meets and falls for Miyoko, a young woman who also rides motorcycles. Obayashi cleverly uses much visual and aural trickery to his advantage, and his leads, Riki Takeuchi and the beguiling Kiwako Harada, are thrillingly alive as the young lovers. The film looks quite good on Blu; extras comprise a commentary, two visual essays and an archival Obayashi interview. 

Rather 

(Giant Pictures)

The long and storied career of veteran CBS reporter and anchorman Dan Rather is recounted by director Frank Marshall in this breezily informative—but not hagiographic—documentary. Rather’s many highs (coverage of the JFK assassination, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Vietnam War) are documented alongside lows like his antipathy for the Bush family that culminated in the sad spectacle of forged documents about Dubya’s national guard exploits that nearly derailed Rather’s career. Rather himself, of course, is heard from, in archival footage and in a new interview, along with family members, colleagues and analysts like Margaret Sullivan of the Buffalo News. The sad truth is that the sort of journalism Rather practiced is sorely missing from today’s imbecile news cycle and will probably never come back.

CD Release of the Week

Yuliya—Forgotten Songs of Julia Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov 

(Azica)

As the daughter-in-law of famed Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov—whose elaborate operas never gained a foothold in the repertory but whose evocative orchestral piece Scheherazade did—you’d think Julia Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov (1878-1942) would have had a higher prominence based on name alone. But that was the not the case: although her music was played in Russia and Germany, after her death she faded in obscurity, possibly because she didn’t use her famous father-in-law’s last name. Now, thanks to the intrepid efforts of American soprano Sarah Moulton Faux, here’s a group of 15 of Weissberg’s songs that will likely be an impressive introduction for many listeners. These harmonically adventurous songs have fluid vocal lines that Faux sings beautifully; piano accompanist Konstantin Soukhovetski plays sensitively; and the disc makes us want to hear more from a mostly forgotten composing voice.

Off-Broadway Play Review—“Gene & Gilda”

Gene & Gilda

Written by Cary Gitter

Directed by Joe Brancato

Performances through September 7, 2025

59 E 59Theatres, 59 East 59th Street, NYC

59e59.org

Jordan Kai Burnett and Jonathan Randell Silver in Gene & Gilda (photo: Carol Rosegg)

The romance of actors Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner is the stuff of showbiz legend. The beloved comedians, who met on the set of the 1982 flop Hanky Panky, had a relationship (and marriage) that ended prematurely in 1989 when Radner died of ovarian cancer. Now, the couple’s time together has been dramatized by playwright Cary Gitter as an accumulation of scenes that resemble both the sketches for which Radner was famous on Saturday Night Live and the alternately silly and memorable comic films Wilder starred in during his ’70s and ’80s heyday. 

Which isn't to say that Gene & Gilda is not entertaining. Gitter has done his homework, and his chronology of their passionate relationship provides moments that are genuinely amusing and, later, touching and tragic. His script also dutifully checks off allusions to—and recreations of—Radner’s beloved SNL characters Lisa Loopner, Candy Slice, Baba Wawa, Roseanne Roseannadanna and Emily Litella, along with bits from Wilder’s big-screen hits Young Frankenstein and The Producers. The downside is that those riffs on the couple’s greatest hits are ready made for nods and easy laughs of recognition, while the framing device of Wilder being interviewed by Dick Cavett breaks the play into bumpily sitcomish segments that are only partially resolved by director Joe Brancato.

Happily, Brancato has resourceful performers to help smooth over much of the rest. As Gene, Jonathan Randell Silver, although at times simply a superior impersonation rather than a characterization, does a good job of catching the almost offhand neuroticism in the actor’s demeanor. And Jordan Kai Burnett gives a beautifully three-dimensional portrait of Gilda, showing her comic brilliance alongside her endlessly charming innocence. Burnett also handles the various impressions of Gilda’s characters with comic aplomb, never getting hung up even during a whipsaw scene when she speeds through several of them in a crazy sort of conversation.

Silver and Burnett play off each other—and even dance together—well enough to provide an extra dimension to this fateful romance that Gitter’s play sometimes lacks.

Art Review—"Vermeer’s Love Letters” at the Frick

Vermeer’s Love Letters

The Frick Collection

1 East 70th Street, New York, NY

Through August 31, 2025

frick.org

The 3 Vermeer paintings at the Frick exhibit 

In 2021, when the Frick Collection began renovating the venerable mansion housing its art and put on display some of its invaluable collection at the nearby Breuer building on Madison Avenue, it seemed the opposite of the Frick’s mission to show its stunning art in its original location, Henry Clay Frick’s ornate home. What worked at the Breuer was that several items—always seen far above or away from visitors—were at eye level and easier to study and admire. However, the sense of a collector arranging his valuable artworks and furnishings where he wanted to place them was lost.

Mistress and Maid

Now, more than four years later, that is no longer the case: the Frick has reopened in its original space, which has been beautifully expanded. It was my first time visiting the upgraded building, so I was able to see what’s been updated as well as view the dazzling new exhibit, Vermeer’s Love Letters, in the new Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries. 

The enlarged Frick now includes access to rooms on the second floor that were previously off-limits to the public, where there are more paintings and other objects like a collection of medals. It's still satisfying to visit the city’s best small art museum, although it’s less small now.

Vermeer’s Love Letters brings together three of Vermeer’s works—the Frick’s own Mistress and Maid, The Love Letter from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid from Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland—for a detailed look at how the artist treated the subject of letter writing as well as one of his favorite subjects: women in domestic situations.

Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid 

Exploring this magnificent trio in a single gallery is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—these intimately-scaled works contain so much painterly and poetic detail that they invite the exceptionally close viewing this exhibit allows. (At the press preview, my wife and I were the only ones in the gallery since everyone else was attending a talk in the auditorium, allowing us several precious minutes alone with these exceptional beauties.)

As these paintings show, Vermeer often worked on a small scale, amazingly packing so much aliveness, truth and humanity into his canvases. When looking at Vermeer’s works, you get lost in their singular worlds: what are these women thinking or saying, and what do the precisely placed objects—for example, in the Amsterdam and Dublin pictures, the paintings on the walls behind the women—symbolize? Even the large dark space behind the women in Mistress and Maid speaks volumes. 

The Love Letter

It’s not often one gets the chance to see Vermeer paintings from outside the U.S. Indeed, at the 1995-96 Vermeer exhibition in Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art I attended, 21 of his extant paintings were included, but The Love Letter was not there, so this exhibit is my first time seeing it. Its miniature magnificence is as breathtaking as the other two paintings.

Vermeer’s Love Letters is a small exhibit only in quantity—it’s monumental in every other sense.

August '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight 

(Sony Classics)

For her smart, often dazzling writing-directing debut, actress Embeth Davidtz has made a poignantly personal drama, based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name, about a white Zimbabwean family during the Rhodesian Bush War in 1980, from the point-of-view of 8-year-old Bobo who, along with her teenage sister Vanessa, lives with her parents Nicola and Tim on a sprawling family farm full of ghosts, real and imagined. Davidtz’ deeply felt drama of people clinging to a land that’s no longer theirs has a powerfully authentic sense of time, place and stifling atmosphere, and she gives a formidable portrayal of Nicola. But stealing the show is the astonishingly young Lexi Venter, who invests Bobo with a lively and precocious authenticity as our imperfect but captivating guide.

Night of the Juggler 

(Kino Lorber)

A true Manhattan time capsule, this vicious 1980 crime drama follows a former cop literally chasing the maniac who kidnaped his teenage daughter mistakenly thinking she’s a millionaire’s child through the streets is set in a seedy city about to burst from all the dirt, garbage and crime. Robert Butler took over the directorial duties after Sidney J. Furie left, and he pushes the boundaries of taste and logic with every insane chase sequence and bizarrely unrealistic bit of dialogue. The performances by James Brolin (as the dad), Dan Hedaya and Richard S. Castellano (as antagonistic cops) and especially a nutso Cliff Gorman (as the kidnaper) are dialed up to 11, which makes this simultaneously silly and must-see viewing.

Rebel With a Clause 

(Syntaxis Productions)

Only someone who loves language as much as Ellen Jovin would make—with her husband, Brandt Johnson—a documentary recording her visits to all 50 states, where she sits at a grammar desk to interact with curious people who discuss and ask questions about such things as past participles, the use of who/whom, ending a sentence with a preposition and, of course, the ubiquitous Oxford comma. Jovin puts everyone at ease with her easygoing manner; director Johnson’s camera catches the nuances of these interactions, even showing without commentary the state of homelessness in this country in a couple of heartrending scenes. But the emphasis is on community in an anything but communal society.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Black Tea 

(Cohen Media)

Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako comes a cropper with this contrived tale of young African woman Aya (a delightful Nina Mélo) who leaves her cheating fiancée at the altar to flee to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, which has a heavily African population and where she learns the subtleties of tea-making from Cai (the charming Chang Han), with whom she slowly falls in love. It’s certainly painless to watch, and Sissako’s eye is as ever precise in his observations, but there’s little here that hasn’t been done better by Sissako in films like Bamako and Timbuktu. The Blu-ray image looks luminous; lone extra is the Berlin Film Festival press conference featuring Sissako, Mélo and Han.

MacMillan Celebrated 

(Opus Arte)

Kenneth MacMillan was a legendary British choreographer whose dances dominated ballet stages for decades; this disc celebrates his exuberant and innovative work with stagings of his Danses concertantes (to the music of Stravinsky), Different Drum (to Webern and Schoenberg) and Requiem (to Fauré). These terrific 2024 performances were staged by the Royal Ballet at its Covent Garden home in London with a cast of exceptional dancers. The hi-def images and audio underline the onstage brilliance; extras include interviews with Benesh choreologists Gregory Mislin and Daniel Kraus as well as Macmillan’s widow Deborah.

Mysteries/Pastorale 1943 

(Cult Epics)

This pair of Dutch films from the 1970s features the estimable pairing of Sylvia Kristel (best known for the Emmanuelle films) and Rudger Hauer (who became a star as an early ’80s villain in Nighthawks and Blade Runner) but are of varying quality— Paul de Lussanet’s Mysteries, in which they play the leads, is a slog of a drama from a Knut Hamsun novel that’s lensed by the great Robby Muller. Krisel and Hauer are excellent, at least. Wim Verstappen’s Pastorale 1943, by contrast, is a hard-hitting drama about Dutch resistance during World War II, with Kristel and Hauer in small supporting roles. In the lead as a Dutchman whose loyalties are murky is the excellent Frederik de Groot. Both films look good and grainy on Blu; extras include commentaries and vintage interviews with Kristel, Hauer, de Laussanet and actor Derek de Lint.

CD Release of the Week 

Tamar Sagiv—Shades of Mourning 

(Sono Luminus)

Israeli cellist Tamar Sagiv’s debut recording is an intensely personal disc that takes the artist—and the listener—through various stages of grief and mourning as well as love and acceptance; the nine short pieces (all original compositions) were inspired by losses in Sagiv’s life along with the precarious state of today’s world. Her playing on solo pieces Shades of Mourning, Roots, Intermezzo and Prelude is starkly expressive and nakedly emotional, while her cluster of works for trio (violin, viola, cello) explores sound worlds both familiar and new. The last piece, In My Blue, is a cello quintet in which Sagiv layers all the parts into a lovely and, finally, moving whole.

July '25 Digital Week III

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Final Destination—Bloodlines 

(Warner Bros)

The first Final Destination—has it really been a quarter-century?—competently executed a clever idea: after a group of high school students gets off a plane before takeoff and it explodes, killing everyone aboard, death gruesomely takes each survivor. The original was a fun popcorn flick, but the sixth go-round is running on fumes—it’s more of the same, directed with a sledgehammer by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky from Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor’s sloppy script. The most memorable scene is also the most imbecile: no hospital would have an industrial-grade MRI machine in an unattended, unlocked room—be that as it may, the horrible MRI deaths uncannily resemble what fatally happened to someone on Long Island. The film looks fine in 4K; extras are a directors’ commentary, two making-of featurettes and a tribute to actor Tony Todd.

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Shari & Lamb Chop 

(Kino Lorber)

Ventriloquist Shari Lewis—whom I remember watching as a kid on various TV shows with her unique hand puppets, including the beloved Lambchop—was a trailblazer who has been nearly forgotten, and whom director Lisa D’Apolito resurrects in this entertaining but not entirely sycophantic documentary. Lewis’ fascinating career and complicated personal life are honestly chronicled, with interjections from her daughter, friends, family and associates, and the result humanizes a genuine artist.

Sovereign 

(Briarcliff Entertainment)

Nick Offerman’s performance as Jerry Kane—an angry, widowed father who subscribes to the lunatic notion that he and his teenage son Joseph (Jacob Tremblay) are sovereign citizens and not subject to the laws of the United States, an attitude that ends badly for all involved—is authentically scary and commanding. The film, which director-writer Christian Swegal based on a real incident in Arkansas in 2010, is unsettling to its core, and if it succumbs to clichés like dogs and babies at the end, there’s a lot of difficult but necessary questions about our country’s direction.

Streaming Release of the Week

Mr. Blake at Your Service 

(Sunrise Films)

In this predictably cheesy but cute comedy, John Malkovich plays the title character, a stuffy Englishman who returns to the house where he and his dead French wife met and causes havoc among those living there: Nathalie de Beauvillier and her house servants. Blake becomes de Beauvillier’s butler and by the time the movie ends, all has been put right in everyone’s world. Malkovich is crusty but charming—and speaks French as a stumbling non-native would—as is Fanny Ardant as de Beauvillier. Sadly, Émilie Dequenne, who plays the cook Odile in such a memorably no-nonsense style, died soon after finishing the film of cancer at age 43—a wonderful performer taken far too soon.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Shadow Force 

(Lionsgate)

Kerry Washington and Omar Sy play an estranged couple whose past as paid assassins catches up to them when a vengeful former boss pays a half-dozen killers to go after them—and their young son. In director/co-writer Joe Carnahan’s hands, it all plays out as one improbably violent and explosive sequence after another. Washington and Sy do what they can, although their characters are faceless ciphers. The film looks good on Blu; extras are Carnahan and editor Kevin Hale’s commentary and three making-of featurettes.                                                                                                                                              

Wagner—Der Ring des Nibelungen 

(Accentus Music)

Richard Wagner’s colossal tetralogy about dwarfs and nymphs and gods and mortals and dragons and gold and incest and murder and Armageddon is, at 15 hours of music, punishing for singers, musicians and—sometimes—audiences. Whenever a new Ring staging premieres, Wagner fans worldwide converge, as they did for this staging at the Zurich Opera House last year. Director Andreas Homoki’s concept is minimalist, based on a unit set that has some interesting visual aspects, but the dragon’s appearance is laughably inadequate. 

Still, at least Homoki’s staging never buries the story and music, which—as conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and performed by the Zurich Philharmonia—sounds as glorious as Wagner intended. The acting and singing by such stalwarts as Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Camilla Nylund (Brünnhilde), Christopher Purves (Alberich), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Mime) and Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegfried) moves the huge plot forward until those final, indescribably beautiful notes. There’s first-rate audio and video; too bad there are no interviews with the conductor, director or singers.

Blu-ray/CD Release of the Week 

Walkin’ After Midnight—The Music of Patsy Cline 

(Mercury Studios)

Country legend Patsy Cline was an inspiration to so many female singers, which this special concert—recorded live at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last year—showcases with a baker’s dozen of performers ranging from country stalwarts like Wynonna and Pam Tillis to newer voices like Mickey Guyton and Sheya Shepard to Broadway stars like Kristin Chenoweth and rock stars like Pat Benatar. Among these superb performances, highlights are Guyton’s “Walkin’ After Midnight,” Shepard’s “I’ve Loved and Lost Again,” Benatar’s “Imagine That” and Wynonna’s “Crazy.” Hi-def video and audio are impeccable; the accompanying CD includes the same songs.