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Alex Barasch
Culture editor
Amid mounting evidence that right-wing demagoguery is alive and well, one option, as an artist, is to render it undead. The Chilean director Pablo Larraín has dealt with Augusto Pinochet’s predations for more than a decade in films such as “No,” “The Club,” and “Post Mortem”; in his new movie, “El Conde,” on Netflix, he turns the kleptocrat into a literal vampire. At first, the striking visuals and the aptness of the metaphor are irresistible. Soon, though, the black comedy’s politics are muddled by an unwieldy plot: a nun goes undercover as an accountant, a butler impersonates his employer, and a late reveal ties Pinochet, ridiculously, to another infamous head of state. The film is more preoccupied with bleak love affairs than with large-scale atrocities, landing somewhere that’s neither funny enough nor dark enough. So far removed from the reality of his crimes, Pinochet risks being defanged.
Photograph courtesy Netflix
“Here Lies Love,” the immersive David Byrne musical playing at the Broadway Theatre, tells the story of another authoritarian, using another unlikely device—in this case, setting the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos in a night club, with the audience prompted to move, dance, cheer, and sing along. On the evening that I attended, the crowd appeared happy to follow these cues, and sometimes to go above and beyond: the election of Imelda’s husband, Ferdinand, led to a spontaneous burst of applause. In the context of the dictatorship to come, my plus-one and I found the exercise queasy. The production, though sleek, leaves Imelda as a glamorous cipher, and spends most of its running time refusing to look too closely at the Marcos regime’s casualties, lest they dampen the vibe. The result is an intermittently fun night out that feels like it shouldn’t be. But lighter treatments of such horrors aren’t inherently doomed. One obvious rejoinder is Ernst Lubitsch’s film “To Be or Not to Be” (now streaming on Max), a comic skewering of Nazism made more potent by the fact that it was released in 1942. In the right hands, the gap between tragedy and farce can be razor-thin.
Spotlight
Photograph by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New Yorker
Music
The Perelman Performing Arts Center, a.k.a. PAC NYC, inaugurates its new facility with a five-night concert series that assembles thirty-odd distinguished artists from various musical disciplines. The opening show, on Sept. 19, dubbed “NYC Tapestry: Home as Refuge,” celebrates New York as a safe space and an incubator for music and culture from around the globe, featuring musicians who have made the city their creative home. Performances in the pay-what-you-wish series range from experimental music (Laurie Anderson) to erhu fiddle-playing (Wang Guowei), and include (pictured, left to right) the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon (with a world-première commission), the soul fusionist Martha Redbone, the concert pianist Daniel Gortler, and Alberto Villalobos, of the world-music violin trio the Villalobos Brothers.—Sheldon Pearce
About Town
Off Off Broadway
“Don’t mind me as I let myself be seen on this stage, on my own terms.” These words come from one of the thirty two-minute plays that, on a recent night, constituted “The Infinite Wrench.” That could be the motto of the whole show, whose performers have an hour to sing, dance, and sock-puppet their way through as many of the plays as possible, in a random order determined by the audience. Note that they don’t act. “We are who we are,” an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, the troupe behind this production, announces before the show. The company doesn’t hesitate to test the audience’s limits; drink the meat-flavored seltzer at your own risk.—Dan Stahl (Kraine Theatre; Fridays and Saturdays.)
Jazz
On the record “Love in Exile,” the vocalist Arooj Aftab, the composer and pianist Vijay Iyer, and the bassist Shahzad Ismaily tap into the same frequency. The songs on the album, which was released in March, move at a spellbindingly sedate pace, building gradually around Aftab’s sinuous melodies, sung in Urdu. Many of the tracks stretch out as if trying to fill a void, with most running around twelve minutes long. The sounds are sustained and even echoing, seemingly inexhaustible. The music’s ebbs and flows—generated by the hiss, hum, and chime of electronics, the gently throbbing bass, and haunting, atmospheric vocals that dissolve like vapor—conjure an inescapable dreamscape.—Sheldon Pearce (Town Hall; Sept. 14.)
Dance
Photograph by Sandi Horvat
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