Silver Manhattan, a modestly scaled musical about guitarist-singer Jesse Malin that was recently workshopped at the Gramercy Theatre, has moved downtown to the Bowery Palace, a gemütlich arts venue that opened last month. At street level, the Palace is an upscale bar; the basement, previously a dance club, is now a cozy, 100-seat playhouse, ideal for Silver Manhattan.
Guitarist-singer Jesse Malin, playing himself, sings “Black-eyed Girl” with Bree Sharp (left) in the musical play Silver Manhattan at the Bowery Palace. Derek Cruz is on guitar in the background at right.
Jesse Malin (the show’s star, as well as its subject) was an early-adolescent prodigy of the East Village punk-rock scene. In 1980, at age 13, he and Heart Attack, the band he started, played a public audition at CBGB’s on a Monday, the slow night of the week. (CBGB’s, where the Ramones and Patti Smith got their starts, was, until 2006, on the same block as the building now housing the Bowery Palace.) Heart Attack didn’t get a second gig at CBGB’s; the reason, according to urban legend, was that the band’s members, being schoolboys, couldn’t promise a retinue of drinking-age fans who would spend money at the club’s bar. But someone in the audience that Monday night, learning that CBGB’s was rejecting Jesse’s band, reached out with an offer from Max’s Kansas City, another famous downtown music venue and the favorite hangout of the Andy Warhol crowd.
After Heart Attack, Malin was part of several other bands, his musical style evolving from punk to more traditional rock. He performed solo and with a variety of revered musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Billy Joe Armstrong, Ryan Adams, and the late Howie Pyro (Malin’s best friend). On May 4, 2023, at age 56, Malin suffered a spinal-cord stroke, a relatively rare, devastating health event that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Written by Malin and Lauren Ludwig, Silver Manhattan (based on Malin’s Almost Grown: A New York Memoir) opens with post-stroke Jesse, motionless and all in black, borne on a stretcher from the back of the theater, down a narrow staircase. Helped into a wheelchair at center stage, he remains there, variously sitting and standing, until the show’s eleven o’clock number.
“Director Ellie Heyman has found an effective balance between serious musical drama and intimate rock concert. ”
The narrative toggles between the present and the past. As pre-stroke Jesse, Malin tells the audience: “I love walking in New York. … Anything’s possible here.” His Lower East Side is all about chance, serendipity, and surprise. “You hit the street, no plan, no agenda … you hear music from a bar, it draws you in. Next thing you know, you’ve danced all night ….” That’s an upbeat start for a musical that contends with a lot that’s dark.
The story gets underway on the first anniversary of Howie Pyro’s death, when Jesse is hosting a memorial celebration of his friend’s life. While taking care of last-minute party arrangements, he’s stricken with intense leg pain; and before the event is in full swing, he’s writhing in agony on the restaurant floor (“constant burning pain in my feet, legs, bladder, hips, and back”).
What follows is Jesse’s medical odyssey, with diagnosis of the stroke and treatment in New York, followed by a six-month regimen of cutting-edge therapies in Buenos Aires. Even at its darkest, though, Silver Manhattan is about self-reliance, courage, and resilience; and, by the end, Jesse is defying his physical challenges (though they remain severe) and getting around adroitly under his own steam.
Despite limited mobility due to a spinal-cord stroke, Malin delivers an exuberant performance in Silver Manhattan at the Bowery Palace. Photographs by Ehud Lazin.
Director Ellie Heyman has found an effective balance between serious musical drama and intimate rock concert. The book scenes are slender, but they tell the story clearly and efficiently. With Malin and the five other actor-musicians on the tiny stage throughout, the 90-minute show is chockablock with singing, intense instrumental interludes, and percussion. (The five are Rob Clores, Derek Cruz, James Cruz, Paul Garito, and Bree Sharp.) Despite the script’s focus on Malin’s freak medical history and struggle to regain self-sufficiency, it offers humor and glimpses of the downtown music world.
Silver Manhattan may strike some musical-theater aficionados as static (and there’s a paucity of perfect rhymes, so dear to devotees of traditional show music). But this is a powerful work that belongs to a lineage of serious, meritorious rock musicals, such as The Lieutenant, the unjustly forgotten My Lai–inspired work that garnered multiple Tony and Drama Desk nominations in 1975.
Late in Silver Manhattan, Malin adopts a motto from one of his Argentinian physicians: “Survival is a creative act.” In the musical’s final moments, he demonstrates his survivor bona fides by climbing back up the narrow staircase, utilizing a walker, and singing with stirring musical accompaniment by virtuoso brass players Danny Ryan and Indofunk Satish.
Silver Manhattan, produced by ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann and David Bason, plays through March 29 at the Bowery Palace (327 Bowery). Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit silvermanhattan.com.
Playwrights: Jesse Malin & Lauren Ludwig
Songs: Jesse Malin
Director: Ellie Heyman
Set Design: Krit Robinson & Marsha Ginsberg
Lighting Design: Brian Scott
Sound Design: Angela Baughman
