Blog Archives
‘The Dreamed Adventure,’ NYFF 2026
In its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate section of the 64th NYFF, Valeska Grisebach’s Cannes Jury Prize-winning film turns from an initial easy set up to a thriller with chilling moments of suspense. Full of twists and turns, Griebach defies narrative stereotypes and allows the authenticity of the local townspeople she uses to create tension, suspense and surprise.
Interestingly, The Dreamed Adventure begins like a Spaghetti Western (without Ennio Morricone’s music) in a setting lost to the modern age and peopled with gristled, thuggish looking types. There, a stranger drives into a scruffy town in a small car without air conditioning to do business. Initially, Grisebach features a middle-aged, craggy-looking, Said (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov) as the protagonist. The filmmaker follows this rugged mystery man’s actions in Svilengrad, a Bulgarian border town at the crossroads of Turkey and Greece. With a slow unraveling of action Griebach keeps us questioning the why and what of the set up with Said.
First, the filmmaker reverses the “hero” trope. When Said attempts to settle business with someone in the town, staying overnight to wait for him, an unknown thug steals his car. Though malevolent forces victimize him and make him helpless, he remains poker-faced and unemotional. Perhaps, the cronies of the man he waits for game him.
Then, the fates step in and he sees middle-aged Veska, an old flame (the sterling Yana Radva). An archeologist Veska currently works at a site in Matochina. After hearing about the theft, she suggests he help her on her dig. On the journey to the ancient site they reacquaint themselves. However, he reveals little information. With natural pauses and looks, we realize they had been together years before and may still have a bond. Said (a Muslim) references his life under Soviet era repression. In a peek beyond the veil, when he explains his parents changed his name to fit in and make it Bulgarian”acceptable” we note his ironic annoyance. Perhaps, this and later information we overhear about his possibly “disappearing” a bullying young man explain why he left the area.
As an omen of good luck, Said fixes Veska’s metal detector. This enables her to find a valuable artifact. Though we expect them to stay together, the filmmaker shifts the narrative’s direction.
In a surprising twerk, Said lopes off with another younger woman he meets in a bar after Veska drops him off. Swapping out Said, Grisebach turns the homespun, sharp-eyed, prescient Veska into the film’s protagonist. When Said disappears, we presume he carries on with the woman he met. However, we never find out what happens afterward. When he doesn’t show up for the dig the following morning, an upset Veska searches for him unobtrusively. Perhaps he faces danger.
Thus, in a relaxed way, she visits with the townspeople, in the cafe, the bar and in after-dinner get-togethers with women and men at their homes to find out what happened to Said. The groups connect with one another over smokes, drinks and conversation. In a fascinating contrast between the women’s and men’s groups, the cast (some locals with un-Hollywood-like faces) reveal the culture of this non-thriving border town.
The women discuss disappearances, and we understand how the town’s ripe position on the border promotes human trafficking. The men flirt with Veska and apologize for being “raunchy,” as she teases them and flirts back. Gradually, she discovers the criminal network’s theft of diesel, a payment needing to be made and the conflict between two criminal leaders vying for each other’s turf. Certainly, the patriarchy rules the town, but Veska rises above it cannily to search for Said, alive or dead.
As Veska continues on her journey, we realize she understands and manipulates the groups and can do this because fundamentally she participates in some way. As an observant anti-hero, she keeps a compromised morality and avoids sanctimonious self-righteousness to survive. Rather than to take the moral high ground, she blends in and gets along. If necessary, regarding the men in her past, apparently she used them sexually and allowed them to use her. In fact romantically she hooked up with one of the mafia locals. However, when another, younger group of men warn her to stop nosing around, she “plays it close to the vest” and leaves.
With each encounter, Grisebach ratchets up the tension. Hearing about about a package mentioned in conversation, Veska cleverly follows up and finds a gun and stashes it in her car. It comes in handy when a drunk young woman, followed by a group of young men after they leave a party, gets into a dicey situation. Veska safeguards her, a protector figure, challenging our impressions of her.
Toward the conclusion of Veska’s journey digging up the crime syndicate, our expectations twist once more toward surprise. Indeed, to help Said’s financial situation, she gives herself over to an unlikely, unappealing crony of the criminal network. Grisebach turns the idea of a romantic, sexual encounter Hollywood style on its head. Instead, she crafts the situation between Veska and the crony, both older adults, not typically visited by filmmakers, into a realistic encounter. The scenes are refreshing, unexpected. Somehow Veska seems all the more attractive in comparison to her sexual partner. Memorable irony.
By the conclusion we discover Veska literally and figuratively “comes out on top.” After an adventurous time, she finds her man, Said, and their exchange ends in the next encounter they have with each other, which we never get to see. Grisebach concludes in Svilengrad as if nothing really happened. Everything stays covered up with lives on the border who struggle to survive.
Grisebach gives an amazing portrait of a time place and characters which are more real than most films could ever achieve. For the write up at NYFF 2026 go to their website https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/the-dreamed-adventure/ Look for it on streaming online platforms.
‘The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire,’ Anne Washburn’s Challenging, Original Play
Known for its maverick, innovative productions, the Vineyard Theatre seems the perfect venue for Anne Washburn’s world premiere, The Burning Cauldron of Firey Fire. Poetic, mysterious and engaging, Washburn places characters together who represent individuals in a Northern California commune. When we meet these individuals, they have carved out their own living space in their own definition of “off the grid.” Comprised of adults and children, their intention is to escape the indecent cultural brutality of a corrupt American society, where solid values have been drained of meaning.
Coming in at 2 hours, 5 minutes with one 15 minute intermission, the actors are spot-on and the puppetry engages. However, the play sometimes confuses with director Steve Cosson’s opaque dramatization of Washburn’s use of metaphor, poetry and song. More clearly presented in the script’s stage directions, the production doesn’t always theatricalize Washburn’s intent. Certainly, the themes would resonate, if the director had made more nuanced, specific choices.
The plot about characters who confront death in their commune in Northern California unfolds with the stylized, minimal set design by Andrew Boyce, heavily dependent on props to convey a barn, a kitchen and more. The intriguing lighting design by Amith Chandrashaker suggests the beauty of the surrounding hills and mountains of the north country where the commune makes its home.
The ensemble of eight adult actors takes on the roles of 10 adults and 8 children. Because the structure is free-flowing with no specific clarification of setting (time), it takes a while to distinguish between the adults and children, who interchange roles as some children play the parts of adults. The scenes which focus on the children (for example at the pigpen) more easily indicate the age difference.
The conflict begins after the members of the commune burn a fellow member’s body on a funeral pyre to honor him. Through their discussion, we divine that Peter, who joined their commune nine months before, has committed suicide, but hasn’t left a note. Rather than to contact the police and involve the “state,” they justify to themselves that Peter wouldn’t have wanted outside involvement. Certainly, they don’t want the police investigating their commune, relationships and living arrangements which Washburn reveals as part of the mysterious circumstances of this unbounded, “bondage-free,” spiritual community.
Nevertheless, Peter’s death has created questions which they must confront as tensions about his death mount. Should they reburn his body which requires the heat of a crematorium to reduce it to ashes? After the memorial fire, they decide to bury him in an unmarked grave, which must be at a depth so that animals cannot dig up his carcass. Additionally, if they keep any of Peter’s belongings, which ones and why? If someone contacts them, for example Peter’s mother, what story do they tell her in a unity of agreement? Finally, how do they deal with the children who are upset at Peter’s disappearance?
We question why they feel compelled to lie about Peter’s disappearance, rather than tell the truth to the authorities or Peter’s mom, even if they can receive her calls on an old rotary phone. Thomas, infuriated after he speaks to Peter’s mom who does call, tells her Peter left with no forwarding address. After he hangs up, Thomas (Bruce McKenzie) self-righteously goes on a rant that he will tear down the phone lines.
When Mari (Marianne Rendon) suggests they need the phone for emergency services, he counters. “Can anyone give me a compelling argument for a situation in which this object is likely to protect us from death because let me remind you that if that is its responsibility we have a recent example of it failing at just that.”
Indeed, the tension between commune members Thomas, Mari, Simon (Jeff Biehl), Gracie (Cricket Brown) and Diana (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) becomes acute with the threat of outside interference destabilizing their peaceful, bucolic arrangements. Washburn, through various discussions, brings a slow burn of anxiety that displaces the unity of the members as they work to hide the truth. What begins at the top of the play as they burn the body in a memorial ceremony that allows Thomas and the group to take philosophical flights of fancy, augments their stress as they avoid looking at hard circumstances.
Fantasy and reality clash also In the well-wrought scene where the actors portray the children moving the piglet they believe is Peter when it reacts to Peter’s belongings, specifically, a poem it chews on. Convinced Peter has been reincarnated and is with them, they take the piglet staunching their upset at Peter’s death by reclaiming and renaming the piglet as the rescued Peter. Rather than to have explained what happened, the commune members allow the children to believe another convenient lie.
This particularly well-wrought, centrally staged scene of the children in the pigsty works to explicate the behavior of the commune members. They don’t confront Peter’s death and don’t allow the children to either. The actors captivate as they become the children who relate to the invisible mom Lula and her piglets with excitement, concern and hope. It is one of the highpoints of the production because in its dramatization, we understand the faults of the commune. Also, we understand by extension a key theme of the play. Rather than confronting the worst parts of their own inhumanity, people close themselves off, escape and make up their own fictional worlds.
Washburn reveals the contradictions of this commune who parse out their ideals and justify their actions “living away from society.” Yet they cannot commit to this approach completely because of the extremism required to disconnect from civilization. As it is, they have a car, they do mail runs and sometimes shop at grocery stores. At best their living arrangement is as they agree to define it and as Washburn implies, half-formed and by degrees runs along a continuum of pretension and posturing.
The issues about Peter’s death come to a climax when Will (Tom Pecinka), Peter’s brother, shows up to investigate what happened to Peter. Washburn ratchets up the suspense, fantastical elements and ironies. Through Will we discover that Peter was an estranged, trust-fund baby who will inherit a lot of money from his grandmother who is now dying. Ironically, we note that Mari who claims she had an affair with Peter and dumped him (the reason why he “left”), is willing to have sex with Will. They close out a scene with a passionate kiss. Certainly, Will has been derailed from suspecting this group of anything sinister.
Also, Will is thrown off their lies when he watches a fairy-tale-like playlet, supposedly created by Peter and the children that is designed to lull the watcher with fanciful entertainment.
In the fairy tale a cruel king (the comical and spot-on Donnetta Lavinia Grays), prevents his princess daughter (Cricket Brown) from marrying her true love (Bartley Booz), also named Peter. The bad king thwarts Peter from winning challenges to gain the princess’ love. Included in the scenarios are puppets by Monkey Boys Productions, special effects (Steve Cuiffo consulting), the burning cauldron of fiery flames with playful fire fishes proving the flames can’t be all that bad, and a beautiful, malevolent, dangerous-looking dragon who threatens.
Once again creatives (Boyce, Chandrashaker and Emily Rebholz’s costumes) and the actors make the scene work. The clever, make-shift, DIY cauldron, puppets and dragon allow us to suspend our judgment and willingly believe because of the comical aspect and inherent messages underneath the fairy-tale plot. Especially in the last scene when Peter (the poignant Tom Pecinka), cries out in pain then makes his final decision, we feel the impact of the terrible, the beautiful, the mighty. Thomas used these words to characterize Peter’s death and their memorial funeral pyre to him at the play’s outset. At the conclusion the play comes full circle.
Washburn leaves the audience feeling the uncertainties of what they witnessed with a group of individuals eager to make their own meaning, regardless of whether it reflects reality or the truth. The questions abound, and confusion never quite settles into clarity. We must divine the meaning of what we’ve witnessed.
The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire runs 2 hours 5 minutes with one 15-minute intermission at Vineyard Theatre until December 7 in its first extension. https://vineyardtheatre.org/showsevents/
