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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
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Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Short Stories
Essays
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An exuberant, darkly humorous novel by the National Book Award–nominated author of Fieldwork.
Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she's still fighting with her husband; and in just a few weeks she will begin rehearsals as Shakespeare's Cleopatra, the hardest role in theater. In an impulsive burst, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow ("I forgot the parsley!" is her lame excuse) to find her estranged mentor, Milton Katz, who was recently forced out of the legendary theater company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona's escape turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face-to-face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has ever loved.
Beguilingly approachable and intricately constructed, at once funny and sad and wise, Mona Acts Out is a novel about acting and telling the truth, about how we play roles to get through our days, and how the great roles teach us how to live.
1
On the outlines of Milton Katz's accomplishment, the general shape and structure of his achievement, there was a single point of agreement: not even the most fervent of his enemies denied that the Disorder'd Rabble owed to Milton the remarkable good fortune that was possession of 107 Avenue C.
The story now was company legend: how in 1966 Milton found the abandoned glove factory, little more than a burnt-out husk, victim of the decline in women's formal handwear and a suspicious fire. How squatters were occupying the building: an anarchist commune on the first and second floors, a shooting gallery on three, and on the fourth floor, a Maoist revolutionary organization. How Milton and his guerrilla Shakespeare company seized the fifth floor. How the company rehearsed there during the week and put on free shows every Friday and Saturday night for anyone hip enough to know where to go and brave enough to make their way down to Alphabet City after dark, wriggle through 107 Avenue C's boarded-up ground-floor windows, and mount the unlit staircases. How Milton slept in the space to keep it safe from looters, scaring off thieves with prop swords. How the city shut off power to the building, so those legendary early shows were lit by candlelight, hundreds of theatergoers crammed cheek by jowl to watch a samizdat Hamlet, Tempest, or Merchant. How the fire marshal closed the building in 1970, the front entrance sealed in cement and a security guard stationed out front. How Milton lobbied, solicited, fundraised, cajoled, and pleaded, how he and he alone made the company a New York cause célèbre. How an editorial in the Times called on the City of New York to find a permanent home for this "intriguing, avant-garde, thoroughly modern theatrical company, who deserve a place in our city commensurate with the place they have earned in our hearts." How Alphabet City was by then more dangerous, more degraded, and less attractive to investors than it had ever been, how the owners were desperate to sell. How Milton assembled a consortium of company supporters who bought the building and sold it to the company for one dollar. How after three years in the wilderness, the company returned to 107 Avenue C, and Milton had a large brass plaque installed in the lobby, and how on it Milton listed the names of the donors who made the acquisition of the building possible. How above the plaque, he engraved the lines from which his company would take its name: "Your disorder'd rabble / Makes servants of their betters."
But half a century after the Disorder'd Rabble's founding, real estate was just about the only terra firma in the nonstop, still-ongoing in-house debate on the subject of Milton Katz. They fought about Milton in the rehearsal rooms, the admin offices, in the dressing rooms, at fundraisers and at after-parties. That Milton wasn't dead made the whole debate that much more intense. The idea of Milton just sitting at home in exile . . . his hair unkempt . . . maybe even drooling—the thought of Milton neglected in his old age would rile up those who still loved him. "We should do something for Milton," they would say, as if discussing the renovation of the crumbling statue of some long-forgotten Civil War hero. "It isn't right about Milton. After everything he's done." The very same thought—of Milton lingering, judging, lounging around in his bathrobe—would produce a wave of equal but opposing outrage among the Miltophobes, who favored tearing down the damn statue in its entirety. Between the extremities of love and hate there was no common ground, no place for nuance. Just mention his name and all the old wounds would reopen, and the two camps, like baboons startled by thunder, would squawk and abandon peaceful grooming to bare their fangs and fist each other vigorously upside the head.
If only Milton would just have the common, human decency to die! Then everyone could ...
Excerpted from Mona Acts Out: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski. Copyright © 2025 by Mischa Berlinski. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
It's Thanksgiving, and Mona Zahid is dreading the day's inevitabilities. She will spend most of her time at home preparing Thanksgiving dinner while being interrogated by her father-in-law about Shakespeare and authorship, listening to her mother-in-law grouse about the latest drama in her book club, and tiptoeing around her dead sister's daughter, her beloved niece Rachel, with whom she had a blowout argument only weeks ago. This will play out while Mona's husband and son have escaped for the morning to play Ultimate Frisbee in the park. Pair all of this with the fact that she is just weeks away from playing the role of her life—Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra—and Mona is resigned to spending the holiday heavily self-medicated in order to endure the tide of her family and the underlying pressure that comes with a multi-faceted acting role.
But just as Mona tells her family that she's going out for parsley and taking her dog with her, a postcard arrives with her own face on it; a picture of her onstage as Lady Macbeth, printed years ago by the Disorder'd Rabble theater company. On the back, a message from Mona's estranged mentor and the former owner of Disorder'd Rabble, Milton Katz: "Call me. I am dying, Egypt, dying: Give me some wine, and let me speak a little. Ever loving, ever yours, ever Milton." What follows is a spontaneous walk through New York City—wandering in grocery stores, idling on park benches and in the local Starbucks, and calling on old friends—as Mona contemplates Milton's message and his illustrious, dubious presence in her career trajectory.
Not everything is as it appears to be in Mona Acts Out. Both laugh-out-loud funny and painfully real, the book seems to juggle two opposing forces in its titular character: the spectacle of performance and the mundanity of the truth. Although she has a longstanding history with Milton, his recent fall from grace following a sexual misconduct scandal plastered in the Times has Mona parsing the layers of their professional relationship and eventual friendship, even as she navigates her own insecurities not only as an actress but also as a wife, mother, and aunt. Mona's sometimes delightfully skewed perspective is part of what makes Berlinski's third novel an entirely enticing and often surprising read.
The character work is what shines in Mona Acts Out. Mona takes up the entire five acts of the novel, minus an interlude featuring an aged Milton. She is both reserved in her outward life and unashamed in her inner life, and I had a wonderful time seeing both sides of her, from the performer politely nodding and listening to her in-laws in her own home to the off-stage actress meandering with Barney the dog down the streets of New York, pondering exactly what to do next.
Given the narrative is almost entirely written in Mona's perspective, her view of supporting cast members does not always align with reality. They seem to take on different roles in Mona's story: the way Mona sees them in her memories, and the way Mona sees them in the present. This is especially apparent in the characters of Milton and Vanessa, an actress who had a brief stint with Disorder'd Rabble. To Mona, Milton was always the brilliant, boisterous director with the audacity to act without care for consequences, and Vanessa was the ingénue whom Mona was equally jealous and enamored of. The subtle inaccuracies between Mona's memories and what readers soon learn is the truth not only make these supporting characters more interesting but also add depth to Mona's personality.
With character development and the exploration of Mona's memories taking center stage, the novel feels largely plotless. Throughout most of the day, Mona's physical path feels almost inconsequential up until the moments when she confronts the stars of her memories. Even so, both Mona and her memories have an irresistible pull—I felt myself wanting badly to keep up with her and see what would happen when, or even if, she would confront Milton. Would she feel the same as she always had about him? Or would everything be different?
Reviewed by Frankie Martinez
Antonia Angress, author of Sirens & Muses
Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Rabbits for Food
Daniel Handler, author of And Then? And Then? What Else?
In Mona Acts Out, seasoned actress Mona Zahid is about to start rehearsals for her role as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. Mona approaches the whole thing with trepidation, citing that she's "never actually seen a great Cleopatra," as the character is many-layered and must command the stage through the show up until the last thirty minutes in the play, when she must "keep the audience already up past eleven right with her while she kill[s] herself."
Based on accounts written by Greek biographer and historian Plutarch, Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare's famous dramatization of the events surrounding Augustus Caesar's rise in the Roman Empire, with an emphasis on Caesar's political manipulation of military leader Marc Antony, as well as how it plays out in Antony's infamous love affair with the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. In Plutarch's accounts, Cleopatra is described as "irresistible" due to her charisma and legendary beauty, often characterized by her long nose as depicted in her portraits on coins. Cleopatra is also well known for having two powerful lovers in her lifetime. In contrast to her relationship with Caesar, Shakespeare's play emphasizes the superior, fated nature of Antony and Cleopatra's affair by having the lovers compare themselves with gods and demigods.
Antony and Cleopatra was printed in Shakespeare's First Folio in 1623. The play's first theatrical production is much harder to date, but it must have taken place by the time it was registered in 1608 by the Stationers' Company, a trade and craft registry in London. Since then, the play has been produced many times on modern stages, all over the world. Past productions in London, particularly by the Royal Theater Company, include some famous runs, in 1953 with Michael Redgrave and Peggy Ashcroft playing the title characters, as well as in 1982 with Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren and 2006 with Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter.
Promotional poster for 2006 production of Antony and Cleopatra, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company
Filed under Music and the Arts
From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person.
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