‘Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice’
When Gavin Creel died of a rare form of cancer last fall, at the age of 48, he left behind an artistic and emotional hole — he was a beloved presence onstage, especially in musical theater, with an easy wit, a sure flair for physical comedy and an old-fashioned elegance. One of his last large-scale endeavors was the musical “Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice,” for which he wrote the book and score, and which he performed in a run at MCC Theater in 2023. The show, which The New York Times’s Michael Paulson described as “a passion project” in his obituary for Creel, allowed the actor to venture into soul-searching as he explored his (very new) relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fortunately, that institution, which had commissioned the project, keeps a capture of an October 2021 performance on YouTube.
‘[Untitled Miniature]’
As a theater maker, Joshua William Gelb fully came into his own with his Theater in Quarantine productions, which he performed and streamed live from a closet in his home, often displaying uncommon technical mastery. From Tuesday through March 25, he continues to explore the live-digital hybrid with a new project that sounds closer to the experiments of such artists as Marina Abramovic than to traditional theater, and in which he will push the boundaries of his own endurance. In “[Untitled Miniature],” Gelb will spend 24 nonconsecutive hours (in 45-minute segments spread over eight days) naked inside a box that’s about 3 feet wide by less than 2 feet tall. Despite (or perhaps because of) the limited space, his movement will be choreographed. Audience members can buy tickets for either the physical performances, to be held at HERE, or for a live feed.
Stream it from the League of Live Stream Theater.
Irish Repertory Theater has been among the most proactive New York companies when it comes to making its productions available online. Right after its omnibus “Beckett Briefs” closes its live run, it will be available on demand for an extra couple of weeks, from Sunday through March 30; the cost is $39 (Irish Rep members get 20 percent off). Directed by Ciaran O’Reilly, the 75-minute show is made up of three relatively short pieces — “Not I,” “Play” and “Krapp’s Last Tape” — which are “about mortality and memory,” as Laura Collins-Hughes wrote in The New York Times. The last, in particular, stars “an understatedly masterful F. Murray Abraham.” We can only wish more companies would follow Irish Rep’s example in making parts of a run available online.
‘Who Am I This Time?’
As “A Streetcar Named Desire” pays one of its regular visits to the New York stages (this time starring Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), now is a good time to check out this film that the director Jonathan Demme made for public television’s American Playhouse in 1982. Christopher Walken plays Harry, a hardware store clerk so shy that he’s barely verbal. Put him onstage, though, and he comes to charismatic life — he needs to play a role to fully express himself. When new-to-town Helene (Susan Sarandon) is cast as Stella opposite Harry’s Stanley in an amateur company’s production of “Streetcar,” sparks fly. But what happens when they need to interact outside, or when they play other roles? Based on a story by Kurt Vonnegut, “Who Am I This Time?” is a lovely miniature that is very perceptive about the transformative power of acting. Walken and Sarandon are surprisingly simpatico as two loners who blossom onstage, and as a bonus the Velvet Underground’s John Cale wrote the original score.
‘Grounded’
On March 21 at 9 p.m., the long-running PBS series Great Performances premieres the Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (“Fun Home,” “Kimberly Akimbo”) and the librettist George Brant’s “Grounded,” which was captured at the Metropolitan Opera. Based on Brant’s own play of the same name, the opera follows the emotional and psychological travails of Jess, a former fighter-jet pilot who now wages war at a distance by operating a drone. Although the one-woman original (an Off Broadway production in 2015 starred Anne Hathaway) has been beefed up to feature more characters, Jess remains its center and the weight of the show falls on Emily D’Angelo’s shoulders — happily, she is up to the task. In his review for The New York Times, Zachary Woolfe praised her as “the best thing about ‘Grounded,’” and also noted the “melted-gold tenor and easygoing charm” of Ben Bliss as Jess’s husband. Another Broadway regular, Michael Mayer (most recently behind “Swept Away”), handles the staging, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.
