Review: In 'Misty,' a restless artist grapples with a gentrifying city
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Sunday, November 3, 2024


Review: In 'Misty,' a restless artist grapples with a gentrifying city
The British writer and performer Arinzé Kene in “Misty,” at The Shed in New York, on Jan. 31, 2023. At the Shed, Arinzé Kene mixes spoken word, music and comedy to tell a story of racial tension and male identity in a changing London. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

by Naveen Kumar



NEW YORK, NY.- There are many ways to tell a story. Freestyle, direct address and a varied assortment of orange balloons are just a few of the expressive means deployed in “Misty,” which opened on Thursday at the Shed. This multidisciplinary piece, by the British writer and performer Arinzé Kene, uses an array of sights and sounds to toy with the perceptions of the people it presumes are watching.

The onstage musicians, Liam Godwin (keys) and Nadine Lee (drums), criticize Kene’s opening rhymes, about a Black man who beats up a drunk passenger on the night bus. Will this be another play about, as Lee says, a “generic angry young Black man”? A story that meets the expectations of a mostly white audience and transforms Black trauma into a commodity? Maybe so, but it’s also a probing and restless self-portrait of the artist.

In the show that Kene says he’s writing, he plays a Londoner navigating an increasingly hostile city, likening its rhythms to the inner workings of a living creature. (“Misty” was commissioned by the Bush Theater in London, where, in 2018, it transferred to the West End.) Accompanied by live beats and with microphone in hand, he delivers spoken verse as the Black man: He leaves the drunk passenger behind, visits a lover and later discovers that his mother has locked him out of their home and he’s being pursued by the police.

The poetry-slam vibe of these scenes is regularly interrupted by Kene’s many critics: His older sister (played as a young girl by the child actor Braxton Paul at the performance I saw) hangs him out to dry over email. The play’s American producer (represented by an empty director’s chair and a lit cigarette resting in an ashtray) is voiced, hilariously, in snippets of speeches by President Barack Obama. “I feel like I’m outside myself, second-guessing what is expected of me,” Kene tells him.

Kene is a versatile artist, who comes across onstage as strikingly honest and vulnerable; “Misty” is as much about the challenges of his creative process as the outcome (a bit of clowning that finds Kene encased in a giant balloon is an apt visual metaphor). The production, from the director Omar Elerian, is beautifully atmospheric, propulsive and often a sensory feat. But “Misty” excels as an act of self-examination more than it coheres as a piece of narrative theater.

Audience comprehension may be strained, for example, by the time Kene clarifies that the man on the bus isn’t him, but a friend who inspired the show. It’s around the same time that Kene reverses the play’s central, and ultimately overworked, conceit, insisting that white gentrifiers, rather than Black men, are viruses infecting the city. (The police, however, remain antivirals.) Kene favors repetition, in his lyrics and broader thematic construction, a style that might benefit from a tighter running time (the show is two hours with an intermission).

There is a meta irony to bemoaning gentrification from inside this Hudson Yards theater, and to confronting white audiences with what they expect to see there. Even in interrogating the conundrum Kene faces as a Black artist, “Misty” narrowly addresses itself to white perspectives. It’s a trap that settings like this one make even harder to escape.



‘Misty’: Through April 2 at the Shed, Manhattan; theshed.org. Running time: 2 hours.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

March 12, 2023

Long-lost letters bring word, at last

Galerie Templon Brussels opens an exhibition of works by French artist Jean-Michel Alberola

Gagosian exhibits Albert Oehlen paintings and Paul McCarthy sculptures

'Jamie Johnson: Growing Up Travelling' on view at Leica Gallery Los Angeles

Rago/Wright announces highlights of their Post War & Contemporary Art sale

Exhibition is dedicated to the work of the Polish pioneer of geometric abstraction Wacław Szpakowski

Karma exhibits recent sculpture by Thaddeus Mosley

Reflex Amsterdam presents 'Eveningside' by Gregory Crewdson

Clars announces highlights of their Spring Design auction

Diego Rivera's America presents in-depth look at legendary works

Solo exhibition of new video works by peter campus opens at Cristin Tierney Gallery

Colby Museum of Art brings together two extraordinary artists: Ashley Bryan and Paula Wilson

Why is a day job seen as the mark of an artist's failure?

Spot, record producer who captured the fury of 1980s punk, dies at 71

Suzy McKee Charnas, writer of feminist science fiction, dies at 83

Greig Burgoyne presents exhibition of newly commissioned work at The Lowry

Wilding Cran Gallery presents a selection of new paintings by Robert Gunderman

Nan Goldin is ready for Oscar night

Michael Tilson Thomas revels in the present with the New York Phil

Review: In 'Misty,' a restless artist grapples with a gentrifying city

A Tolstoy Adaptation Has New Relevance

Review: In this dance, even the nose scratches are choreographed

For rare book librarians, it's gloves off. Seriously.

Understanding Diabetes-Related Retinopathy: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

How to integrate Chat GPT with WhatsApp?




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful