A Cafe with a Difference

Review of The Van Gogh Café, Yale Cabaret

FLOWERS, Ka.—For those passing through or living fulltime in the area, Van Gogh Café offers homey décor and comfort food galore. I mean, that Emmie Finckel has done wonders with the place. It’s a downhome oasis with sunny yellow walls, where Formica tables sit beside some with homemade wooden planks, where mismatched chairs of all descriptions abound, where a sturdy counter—presided over by Marc (Mihir Kumar), the proprietor—is apt to be peopled with regulars on a first-name basis, where assorted knick-knacks and bric-a-brac decorate the tables, the bathroom walls are adorned with painted hydrangeas, and the record player intuitively grasps the song you need to hear.

Clara (Shimali De Silva), Marc’s charming ten-year-old daughter, will take your order if you show up in the hour before school starts. With Marc somewhat conflicted about his lot in life, Clara is clearly the VGC’s biggest devotee, an enthusiast who finds every visitor a source of fascination and believes there’s an enduring magic in the walls of the café. Well, why not, the café was once a storied theater and who knows what feats have occurred there. For Clara, who might be nursing a hurt now that her mother has moved to New York, the possibilities of the place are endless, as anything might happen.

She may have a point, or at least that’s my takeaway from a recent visit. There were doings a-plenty. A source of considerable amusement was the way a stray gull had taken up residence on the roof, only to be befriended by Clara’s cat. The lovestruck feline kept snagging articles of clothing from Lon (Faizan Kareem), a hapless regular—a boot, a scarf, a glove—to award to the visiting bird. Eventually, a flock of gulls were hanging out there, only to be dispersed in a providential fashion through the agency of some passers-through, Kelly (Lily Haje) and Jack (Devin Matlock). The lady is an ornithologist, really!

That’s often the way things go around The Van Gogh Café, Clara insists, as, for instance the visit of the Fancy Lady (Jocelyn Knazik Phelps), a stranger who left behind some seeds that magically became gardenias which were, of course, the favorite flower of that aged actor (Danilo Gambini) who visited later, to recall his former glories and to await an old friend.

Events can sometimes be a little disconcerting—like a thunderstorm that knocked out the power and, according to Clara, made the food able to cook itself. Which was a good thing as Marc had a period there where he saw himself as a poet, a passion perhaps inspired by some changes in his romantic outlook. Then there’s the time Maria (Rebecca Kent)—she’s sort of a peremptory type, but really very nice—found herself face to face with her daughter, Ella (Jocelyn Knazik Phelps), who left years ago. And, guess what, she’s pregnant! So Maria gets to be a grandmother after all.

Meanwhile Sue (Lily Haje) and Ray (Nicholas Orvis) occasionally argue over nothing, but it’s worth it just to hear Sue get all agitated with that little piping voice she has. And did I mention the person at the table adjacent to me? A playwright (Taiga Christie) who wrote a lot at every visit—so, who knows, we may all be in a play one day. Kinda like that old Beatles song—“and though she feels as if she’s in a play / She is anyway.”

That’s the feeling at The Van Gogh Café, alright. Watch where you sit because the regulars have some chairs all to themselves, but there’s plenty of seats all around to catch the comings and goings (of which there are a lot!). I won’t say there’s never a dull moment—I mean, this is Kansas, after all—but the cheer is infectious, the locals likeable, the food not bad. (I had the Greek salad as a starter, then the roast turkey with mashed potatoes and green beans—all of which was very satisfying, but I found myself eyeing the fried mozz appetizer and the slab of meat loaf I saw on other plates). Marc, according to the regulars, burns pies more often than not, and there’s a general opinion that the lemon meringue isn’t up to what it was when his wife was on the premises. My slice was fine, though the crust was a bit heavy maybe. I hear that the coffee is much improved, though, and the waitstaff are like people you might see in a real play sometime. Speaking of actors, I’m really glad I got to see that old star’s visit. What a charming guy, so sweet and gracious! You’d never know the career he had, he was so humble. Very touching. That’s the kind of thing I’ll be dining out on for a while. Maybe even on that meat loaf . . .

Oh, and I should mention. The Café is open for dinner at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday. It also offers a late night snack menu tonight (I guess since it’s a Friday it’s OK for Clara to be up that late.) And on Saturday, a brunch menu at noon. That features a menu and a show that schoolkids should appreciate, especially any that have an interest in theater. Like the Yale Cabaret—which has storied walls in its own right—The Van Gogh Café assumes that the magic of childhood extends into our joy in the arts, no matter how old we might be (I’m not saying—but I did know all the songs from the Sixties that record player played.)

There’s magic in theater, certainly. And there’s magic—theatrical and otherwise—at The Van Gogh Café. Get in on it while you can (like, before you grow up too much).

The Van Gogh Café
Proposed, directed and adapted by Emily Sorensen and Madeline Charne, based on the novel by Cynthia Rylant

Set Designer: Emmie Finckel; Costume Designer: Miguel Urbino; Lighting Designer: Tully Goldrick; Associate Lighting Designer: Matthew Sonnenfeld; Sound Designers: Liam Bellman-Sharpe & Bryan Scharenberg; Technical Director: David Phelps; Producers: Madeline Carey & Sarah Scafidi; Stage Manager: Zak Rosen

Cast: Taiga Christie, Shimali De Silva, Danilo Gambini, Lily Haje, Faizan Kareem, Rebecca Kent, Jocelyn Knazik Phelps, Mihir Kumar, Devin Matlock, Nicholas Orvis

Yale Cabaret
March 5-7, 2020

yalecabaret.org

Watch Yourself

Review of Rubberneck, Yale Cabaret

The Yale Cabaret is back for its second weekend in November and won’t return until December 5th. This week Rubberneck by Mattie McGarey, a New York-based choreographer and performer, brings to the Cab its second wordless performance piece of the season. Here, unlike Bodyssey, the third show of the season, narrative trajectory is less marked in favor of vignettes of movement. A cast of six, garbed in becoming outfits with pleasing color coordination (Yunzhu Zeng, costumes), move through a series of routines. Some, like the opening—in which all perform morning routines such as showering, arranging hair, dressing—contain elements of mime. Others, like one that seems to be taking place, judging by the rhythmic music, in a club, makes the six seem like parts of the same collective organism. The overall impression is of six parts of the same machine, located in separate spaces, but answerable to the same directives.

The cast of Rubberneck by Mattie McGarey at Yale Cabaret, November 14-16, 2019

The different arrangements of the six make for changing patterns, and each performer interprets the movements differently. The ad hoc cast, which includes McGarey, is drawn from Yale College, the Yale School of Music, the Yale School of Drama, and from the New Haven community. Rubberneck, the statement by the artistic team reads, “interrogates body language, symbolic gestures, and unspoken social cues as essential ingredients to the expansion and extinction of our society.” With that in mind, the repetitions can be seen as the rote movements we all perform as a means to exist in society (I won’t say simply “exist,” for who knows what that might be like?) and the personal je ne sais quoi each brings to such repetitive movements is the little friction of individuality.

The six performers often enough seem robotic, moving upon mindless tracks. The impression is strengthened by the many times the performers extend a palm in front of their faces, staring into the little screen that now dominates all social spaces. At one point, with the six sitting on chairs, each throws out looks into the social space as if trying both to be seen and to avoid seeing. Or maybe just trying to see who might actually see them. A related sequence found each slipping about on the hard vinyl chairs, trying to find some sweet spot between relaxation and vigilance, some almost falling, some never quite at ease.

There’s a heightened sense throughout the show of what it means to watch others move. If you’re the type of person who can be occupied for hours watching people in parks, train stations, airports and so on, you should find the show very appealing. There’s always new information coming at the viewer even when it works at some subliminal level, the way we—perforce—have to process whatever takes place around us. Here, the show is for our attention and yet it’s the kind of show that makes us attentive to what makes sense, what has significance, in what others do and how they look while doing it. What it means, in other words, to be a spectator is implied in everything we notice in public. “Rubberneck,” of course, refers to the way people acknowledge something untoward happening, most commonly used to describe how an accident suddenly, in the midst of the routine behavior of driving, makes us spectators again, watchers at what has happened to someone else.

Mattie McGarey in Rubberneck at Yale Cabaret, November 14-16, 2019

Several times McGarey detaches from the simpler movements the others perform. It starts with a dramatic movement as if being ejected, in a slide across the floor backwards, while the other five stand in a sort of fortified coffee klatch. At other times, she’s apt to spiral about on the floor, creating movements with more rhythmic fluidity than the group tends to enact. There are also dispersals of the cast in ways that have an obvious symbolic logic, as when the two male performers sit off to the side as if in their own world, leaving the four female performers to work through other routines. Or a variation on musical chairs—all six walk around the line of six chairs and, in sequence, the performers break out of the rhythm to remove their own chairs, one at a time. What are the chairs? A habitation, a comfort, a personal space we each bring and take with us?

The show is greatly aided by Taiga Christie’s lighting and Bailey Trierweiler’s compositions which at times feel trancelike, at times using flurries of more anxious rhythm, at times brandishing silence as perhaps the most awkward of social conditions. Full of suggestion more than statement, the vignettes offer stylized interactions that may or may not seem opaque depending on the viewer. In any case, Rubberneck gives us something to look at even while perhaps making us pause to wonder why are so eager to find things to look at.

Rubberneck
Created, directed, and choreographed by Mattie McGarey

Producer: Sarah Cain; Costume Designer: Yunzhu Zeng; Lighting Designer: Taiga Christie; Composer & Sound Designer: Bailey Trierweiler; Sound Engineer: Anteo Fabris; Stage Manager: Leo Egger

Performers: Faizan Kareem, Xi Luo, Mattie McGarey, Hannah Neves, Adrianne Owings, Arnold Setiadi

Yale Cabaret
November 14-16, 2019