Theater Reviews: Lauren Yee's “King of the Yees” Is an Amusing Slice of San Francisco Chinatown Life; Duncan Sheik’s Last Musical, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen,” Is About Sex Workers and Sex Writers; and “Machine Learning” Is “Who’s Afraid of AI Woolf?”

King of the Yees (c) HanJie Chow

Theater: King of the Yees 
At Signature Theatre 

Lauren Yee’s plays have always had absurd and funny flights of fancy, like in her last play, Mother Russia, Russia was an actual character on stage. There are plenty of amusing asides going on in King of the Yees, an older play having its big Off-Broadway premiere, but what affected me most is the autobiographical part of her semi-autobiographical work. Like Lauren’s upbringing in San Francisco and her father’s proud involvement in the Yee Family Association, my family lived across the Bay in Oakland, where we were also part (tangentially) of the Wong Family Association (the butt of many of Yee’s jokes in the play). So, while I enjoyed the funny, the father-daughter relationship and the Chinese-ness of it all resonated more. The play starts in a very meta way in which we watch Lauren Yee (The Last Jedi’s Kelly Marie Tran) at a performance of King of the Yees, a two-hander about “Lauren Yee” (Maureen Sebastian) and her father “Larry” (David Shih) when the real Larry (Francis Jue) interrupts the play. From there, the play within the play stops while the play we’re watching is shot out of a cannon as Larry and his big personality take over the stage, taking questions from the audience, going through the history of the Yee family (including how and why the Association was created) and just making Lauren miserable as she tries to take back possession of her play. After another Yee, Leland (no relations), a real-life California state senator whom Larry supports, is arrested for corruption, Larry disappears and Lauren turns to her ancestors to help her find him. 

Reviews: Will “La Bola Negra,” a Gay Film Mostly Set During the Spanish Civil War, Be an Oscar Heavyweight? Also, Some New Asian Queer Films to Look Out For: “We’re Nothing at All,” “Will You Still Be My Friend” and “Border”

La Bola Negra (c) Netflix

Film: La Bola Negra 
In Cinemas, Streaming at Netflix December 2 

Ever since its triumphant premiere at the Cannes Festival, La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) has been touted as the best Oscar contender to premiere there, even though its subject matter—gay men during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s—would not seem to be in Oscar’s wheelhouse. But, La Bola Negra has incredible epic reach with a tragic love story at the center of civil unrest by the Spanish directing duo known as Los Javi (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi), who won the Cannes Best Director prize (tied with Paweł Pawlikowski of Fatherland). The film takes place in three time frames, the majority in 1937, during the height of the war. A young trumpeter named Sebastián (played by popular Spanish singer Guitarricadelafuente), whose family home was bombed out, has joined the pro-Franco Nationalists soldiers, and one of his first tasks is to guard a captured enemy spy, Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau), who has been wounded and is convalescing in the hospital ward before being questioned. The higher-ups want Sebastián to get close to Rafael to learn any secrets, and while he takes this role seriously, Sebastián starts to fall in love with his prisoner. The second time line takes place in 1932 in Granada, and involves Carlos (Milo Quifes), whose membership to an exclusive casino/men’s club is in jeopardy because of rumors that he’s gay. The third storyline jumps to 2017 in Madrid where a young gay man, Alberto (Carlos González), is told that his grandfather, who he thought was already dead, has left him something in will, but he has to travel to the country to pick it up. 

Theater Reviews: “Midnight” Is a Unique and Visionary Musical About Slavery; “School Girls” Is An Enjoyable Broadway Romp; “Slam Frank” Invents a Hip-Hop Anne Frank; and What Is “The Ask” Actually Asking?

Midnight (c) Valerie Terranova

Theater: Midnight 
At the Daryl Roth Theatre 

There are some shows that make so much noise before it opens that I know the show’s whole history and paper trail reviews before the first note is played. I can’t say this is the case with Midnight, the exciting, daring and unwieldy new musical by internet and reality show personality Todrick Hall, whose previous projects missed me completely. But when I hear one person wrote the book, songs, choreographed and directed his first ever musical, my first instinct is skepticism. Stephen Sondheim had Hal Prince and Michael Bennett. Lin-Manuel Miranda had Thomas Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler. But as they say, confidence is half the battle, and whoever Hall convinced to help him produced a show that is truly his vision, the gamble paid off. Midnight takes its cue from Hamilton as it takes place in America’s past and creates a contemporary, all-sung-through score with an ensemble of actors hopped up on adrenaline and sheer will, who are shot out of a cannon from minute one and don’t land until almost three hours later. The play starts with the birth of Rail (Hall), whose parents are two slaves on the plantation of Sylvester (Ciarán Mccarthy), who immediately separates them, giving his mother to another house, leaving Rail to be mostly raised by the eternal mother figure Ethel (Ayana George). Although persued by the eternally optimistic Lily Rose (Charlotte Odusanya), Rail just wants to keep his head low and survive each day. That is until he meets the charming Richard (Jeremy Beloate), the possible fiancé to Scarlet (Kennedy Caughell), the daughter of Sylvester’s scheming sister Charlotte’ (Autumn Hurlbert). Richard, who was essentially raised by his family slave, has become a closet abolitionist and hires Rail to help him build a house for him and his future bride. They also secretly meet every night at midnight so Richard can teach Rail how to read and write before an impulsive kiss sets the story on an inevitable conflict between black and white, slave and master and gay and straight. 

Film Reviews: New York Film Festival Snapshots Include the Scariest Film of the Year, “Artificial,” About the Rise of OpenAI; Mike Leigh’s Touching Last Film, “Tender Loving Care;” Lee Chang-dong’s Continued Look at Class—"Possible Love” and More

Artificial (c) NEON

The New York Film Festival ended yesterday, and if we judge it as a preview of what might get Academy Award nominations, this year’s edition seems to be a success as almost every film I saw was good enough to get nominations. Here are some quick reviews and the hopefuls’ Oscar chances.

Film: Reviews and Previews of Some of the Films at the 64th Annual New York Film Festival, Which Starts This Weekend

(c) The Interested Bystander 

Do you smell it? It’s in the air. New York City intelligentsia are descending on the Upper West Side to see all the buzzy films from auteur directors or some projected Oscar nominees for later this year. It’s always fun to be in the lobby of the many theaters in the Film at Lincoln Center complex (as well as select theaters in the other boroughs, like at BAM and MoMI) hearing people’s reaction to films they’ve already seen and the ones they’re looking forward to. 

Like most film festivals, New York screenings always have long lines of people either seeing a film or hoping to get the seat of a ticket holder who cancels. The films chosen by the FLC crew, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim this year include many of the top titles shown at other festivals, and a couple of world premieres like the Centerpiece Film, Behemoth, directed by Tony Gilroy and starring Pedro Pascal, and Closing Night Film’s 14th, the documentary follow-up to 13th by Ava DuVernay, about how the 14th Amendment affects African-Americans.