“The Scots believe that life is pitiless and harsh, but that deep inside us all, there’s a churning sea of desire and optimism that’s usually suppressed by drink, stoicism and bravado.” — Justin Currie

In five acts, Shakespeare covered treason, murder, and supernatural evil as he recounted the fate of a Scottish king in his shortest tragedy MacBeth. Playwright and performer Russell Barr takes about sixty minutes to narrate the savagery of a more contemporary Scottish setting in his monologue Sisters, Such Devoted Sisters. The resulting performance is not for those of a nervous constitution.

The play was awarded Best Production when it debuted at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and after three sold-out runs in London was brought to New York in January by actor Michael Imperioli for a run at Studio Dante, the space he owns with his wife Victoria. Those familiar with Imperioli’s most notable role (as Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos) will appreciate his attraction to the piece: like the HBO show, it offers a dark view of a controversial lifestyle that is simultaneously cataclysmic and comical.

Barr plays a transvestite; his alternate moniker is Bernice. The play takes place in his bedroom, a set with meticulously laid details leaving no doubt as to time and place: the Smiths records, Return of the Jedi curtains, rollout writing desk and gaudy floral wallpaper indicate early ’80s; a can of Scotland’s national soda Irn Bru, a box of Cadbury’s Roses and a Rampant Lion flag designate what dismal, rainy island this is.

As Bowie’s farewell to glam rock “Rebel Rebel” pipes in, Barr rises from bed dressed in drag: spiked boots, skin-tight rubber pants, fur coat, wig, the lot. By final curtain, he has bid farewell to his alter-ego too, having undressed, removed his makeup and wig. What’s left is, simply, a man. A bald man. In striped pajamas.

Most of Barr’s tales are of a sexually deviant nature, involving illicit transactions, poppers, prostitutes… They’re usually uproarious, if uncomfortable at times. We are sitting mere feet from the stage, and he is not afraid of sitting in audience member’s laps (though thankfully not mine) as he recounts a sexual conquest, or to physically demonstrate a conversation overheard between two women in bathroom stalls as they take care of their business. Of course, the more he undresses, the more we wonder if and when he will stop.

In typical Scottish fashion, Barr is self-deprecating in his tales of drug-fueled misdeeds, maintaining a stoic sense of humor despite his decaying world in such a way that only a Scot could. But periodically Barr freezes, quivering, seeming to seizure, before abruptly changing tack, and it’s clear that more sinister details have yet to emerge. Barr is not just here to make us laugh at the follies of Glasgow transvestites; he’s slowly revealing the brutality of the men he runs with like a pack, men that call themselves sisters, but who possess a cruelty that can’t be hidden behind makeup and wigs. Ultimately, the façade of their so-called sisterhood unravels into a vicious betrayal against one of their own.

–Julia Clarke

Times Square is an indisputable marvel of the modern world. An Eighth Wonder, if you will. There can be few other experiences, with the exception perhaps of a trip to Tokyo, that compare to the sensation of rising like steam out of New York’s musty subway, being propelled through a revolving door, squinting against the sudden light, and being swept up in a human wave (hundreds of people? thousands?) all with eyes fixed heavenward in a mass state of utter sensory overload.

There are the glittering lights, diverting animated screens, mile-high billboards, and that enormous Cup Noodle in the sky with steam rising appetizingly out of it. You can watch a music video on the side of MTV’s studios as you wait to cross the street and while away hours in the dozens of shrines to capitalism: from M&M candies to a scene from Forrest Gump. If you can detach yourself from the throng, you can buy hot nuts, comedy show tickets, Yankees sweatshirts, and everything else you don’t need.

And I write this as a Gothamite. After a year here, I still gasp and squint and ooh and ah every time I pass through. Even if you’ve been there a thousand times and hate cities and people and entrepreneurship, there is something very wrong with you if you are not dazzled by the spectacle that is Times Square.

New York is a human ecosystem. It is defined by the many humans who have sailed or driven or flown here looking for a new life over the past 400 years, shaping the landscape to their needs. But turn off the bright lights for a second and there’s a bigger story. When Henry Hudson sailed in on September 12, 1609, the island was known to its Lenape natives as “Manahatta,” or “the land of many hills.” I’m not sure at what point the name changed, but presumably it was when they did away with all the hills. It’s very hard to stand in Manhattan today and picture it hilly, but that’s largely because you can’t see much beyond the skyscrapers. There’s no horizon or perspective. But if you choose your location carefully, say, 89th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, or go all the way up to the northwest tip of the island, you’ll see it still does earn its name.

Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Bronx is the project director of The Manahatta Project, which has devoted much of the last decade to fostering awareness of the natural world in this most urban of cityscapes. And it doesn’t get much more urban than New York: in 1950, it was declared the world’s first “mega city” with a population of 10 million people. Even though that number has reduced to 8 million today, the 1.5 million that live on the 23-square-mile Manhattan Island itself — and the millions more that flock to the heart of the city each day to work — makes for a dense population.

When Sanderson first moved to New York from California, he saw the island we all see it: a microcosm of the human footprint on the world, a turbulent web of diverse urban “ecosystems.” From Times Square, the Amazonian-like currents of people and vehicles snake out in every direction, above and under ground. Along manmade avenues creep lines of taxis like yellow beetles. Downtown, Greenwich Village is like an orchard, but instead of trees, you’ll find crooked old buildings, always with character. In contrast, the Financial District features skyscrapers standing straight and tall, like a newly planted forest holding the future paper of America. On the banks of the East River, the delta of the Lower East Side still resembles wasteland in parts. Uptown, the Upper East Side is an older, established wood, with new trees sneaking in that don’t quite blend in with their surrounding. The Upper West Side is a sweeping plain where the avenues always seem just a little broader, and then there’s the colorful, gritty, complexity of Harlem, the last frontier of gentrification. At the center of all of this lies the real-life pasture of Central Park: 843 acres of lawns, trees, water sources, and yes, even rolling hills. It was at Central Park last week where, fittingly, Sanderson offered a free lecture on The Manahatta Project, exhibiting his research into Manhattan’s original ecosystem, and outlining plans for the city’s 400th birthday next year.

The project began when Sanderson came across a British Headquarters Map of Manahatta from 1782. Combining historic and contemporary methods with the antique map, GPS and computer animation, he began to reconstruct the ecology of Manahatta and drew some startling conclusions. It’s often thought that the original ecosystem here was more or less uniformly marshy, rather like the view from the train to and from Newark Airport (which, I must add, is one of the bleakest, most depressing views anywhere in the world). To the contrary, Sanders discovered that Manahatta was originally home to 54 distinct ecosystems. That’s far more than Yosemite National Park. Take that, California!

The diverse human population that characterizes Manhattan today was once an array of wildlife, equally diverse (and dangerous): wolves, elk, mountain lion, deer, beaver, and tens of thousands of birds. Besides birds, you’d be hard-pressed to find any of these creatures here today outside of the Central Park Zoo, although a beaver in the Hudson last year did provoke hope for ecologists. What is today the neighborhood of Inwood was a chestnut grove. A stream ran right down 84th Street, where my apartment building now stands. In fact, Manahatta was full of streams running through forests and wetlands.

Today, these streams are gone, replaced by sewage systems and soggy subways, yet Sanderson’s motive is not to lament the past; rather, it’s to imagine a world without us. According to a recent UN estimate, by 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will reside in cities. Although cities are generally seen as the biggest strain on the environment, Sanderson actually views this as a good thing. More concentrated pockets of human population will, he believes, mean more of the rest of our land can be conserved.

On September 12, 2009, when the Manahatta Project celebrates the city’s quadro-centennial, Sanderson hopes to instill in the city’s inhabitants an appreciation of what lies beneath our feet, beyond the concrete. But instead of attempting to strip away what makes the city great today, he will use animation and art to simulate ecological history in an urban context.

There are many ideas for the celebrations, none set in stone, but the one that captured my imagination the most was the idea to hijack every available screen in Times Square, and replace the images with ones displaying what Manahatta once was. For Manhattan, there’s no going back; it will always be a city. But perhaps for one day next year I’ll be able to rise out of the hot subway, stumble through the revolving doors and gape at stately forests, lush wetlands, and sparkling streams, listen to the call of birds, and breathe in traffic exhaust fumes.

–Julia Clarke

Londoner Kate Nash became an overnight sensation in the U.K. even before the release of her debut record, Made of Bricks. Many musicheads stateside were already hip to her brash but thoughtful songs and furious, deliberate piano work before the record made a U.S. release — which helps to explain why talk about her is everywhere right now. If you still have yet to hear Kate Nash, press “play.”

Kate Nash podcast [ 5:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

According to NME, Kate is writing a series of short stories influenced by Roald Dahl — including one based around a seven-foot transvestite named Roy — and would like to eventually release a collection.

Conor McPherson’s Broadway production The Seafarer doesn’t inspire much sympathy for the devil, even when he’s pitted against four deadbeat alcoholics. For one thing, he doesn’t like music. His features are arranged a constant glare, with hooded brow shadowing steely eyes that thinly mask an undercurrent of seething wrath with cold austerity.

He arrives in the small Irish town of Baldoyle one Christmas Eve in the form of Mr. Lockhart (Ciaran Hinds), an overgrown brute of a man, seemingly ready to burst the seams of his brown suit at any moment. He’s here to settle an old debt; after beating Sharky Harkin (David Morse) at poker, he intends to take him back to Hell. Over the course of the evening, Lockhart never once breaks into a smile, though he frequently sneers; and while he gets drunk on homemade pochine, he takes pleasure in nothing.

The main character Sharky is one of those terminal failures at all of life’s attempts, from jobs to women; a pitiful character who mutely suffers his brother’s incessant put downs. Recently returned from another failed exploit, his current goal is to stay on the wagon, at which you know from the outset he will certainly fail. He is surrounded from the crack of dawn by drunks and drink, namely his brother Richard, played brilliantly by Jim Norton, whose recent blindness serves as no obstacle to his constant quest for booze. Richard’s friend Ivan should have gone home to his wife and kids days ago, but never sobers up enough to make a rational decision or find his glasses. The fourth drunk is Nicky, the last person in the world Sharky wants over at the house. Nicky, who lives with Sharky’s ex-wife, was invited over by the antagonizing Richard, and not coincidentally it is he who brings Lockhart to darken Sharky’s doorstep.

Christmas Eve at the Harkins’ is a rollicking slapstick display of Ivan and Richard blindly undermining Sharky’s attempt to stay sober by forcing as much alcohol as possible down their own gullets. The hilarity is punctuated by more poignant moments, as Sharky’s failings are pointed out to him again and again. But later, when Lockhart and Nicky arrive, the revelry takes a sinister turn.

In a haze of gullibility and drunken ignorance, Lockhart easily persuades the men to join him in a game of poker, revealing his true identity only to Sharky towards the end of the first act, in order that he may suffer his impending doom for the entire second act. As Sharky reels from the revelation, the others carouse in a state of complete indifference, perceiving Sharky’s stunned anguish as his typical spoilsport attitude and nothing more malign. Even Lockhart’s sly revelation of each man’s past sins only briefly dampens the spirit, and the solution to that, Richard surmises, is to put on one of the CDs Sharky received for Christmas. At the opening chords of John Martyn’s “Solid Air,” Lockhart grabs his skull with both hands, as if trying to force the noise back out, his face a twisted mess of agony. Too polite a host to ignore his guest’s obvious discomfort, Richard turns the music off, but the unasked question lingers: who doesn’t like music?

Here you may secretly hope for a Wizard of Oz-style ending, whereupon discovering his adversary’s achilles heel, Sharky blasts the Stones until Satan is reduced to a pile of ashes, but McPherson is too smart and insightful for that. He has created an all-powerful enemy, and an underdog, and only a conclusion where the underdog beats the devil at his own game will satisfy, even if the outcome is achieved through sheer Irish luck. This, in fact, results in a more touching resolution.

As the devil finally slouches off in defeat, Nicky heads back to his girlfriend and Ivan goes home to make amends to his wife, Richard and Sharky are for once alone, brothers together. It’s Christmas, there’s plenty to drink, and they can play John Martyn’s “Sweet Little Mystery” as loud as they want.

–Julia Clarke

The sophomore effort from Eric Lindell, Low on Cash, Rich in Love finds the bluesy roots rocker with the easy, soulful voice in top form. Julia Clarke will guide you through samplings from the organ-rich single “Lay Back Down” to the rollicking take on Gil-Scott Heron’s “Lady Day and John Coltrane” in this Songlines podcast.

Eric Lindell podcast [ 4:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download