Grant’s Tomb chronicles one theater, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in the broader civil war between blue and red armies.

Cast
Victorious Garcia Doe, b. unknown, transient
Alaskan Moose, b. 1942, 200 Central Park West, totem
Joseph Papp, b. 1921, 415 Central Park West, theater impresario
American Robin, b. unknown, transient

Cameos (partial list)
Ulysses S. Grant, b. 1822, W. 122nd Street and Riverside Drive, general
Billie Holiday, b. 1915, 9 W. 99th Street, singer
William Kemp, b. 1850, 116th Street and Broadway, student
George Kolombatovich, b. 1946, 450 Riverside Drive, fencer
Thomas P. Leonard, b. 1928, 110 Morningside Drive, priest
John Mace, b. 1920, 337 Riverside Drive, voice coach
Donald MacKayle, b 1930, 792 Columbus Avenue, choreographer
Muriel Manings, b. 1923, 309 West 104th Street, dancer
Audrey Munson, b. 1891, 288 West 70th Street, model
Dorothy Parker, b. 1893, 252 W. 76th Street, theater critic
Emery Roth, b. 1871, 210 W. 101st Street, architect
Norman Saunders, b. 1907, 312 W. 104th Street, commercial artist

8 am
Red Hotel, 1 Central Park West.
The Casino, d. 1936, Mid-Park at 70th Street.
9 am
The Pythian, b. 1927, 135 W. 70th Street.
Blue Hotel, 2109 Broadway.
10 am
American Museum of Natural History, d. 10:30 am, 200 Central Park West.
The Beresford, b. 1929, 81st Street and Central Park West.
11 am
Belvedere Castle, d. 11:01 am, Mid-Park at 79th Street.
1 pm
Mom Holiday’s, d. 1947, 9 West 99th Street.
3 pm
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, b. 1892, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue.
5 pm
Grant’s Tomb, b. 1897, Riverside Drive and W. 122nd Street.
The Hendrik Hudson, b. 1907, 380 Riverside Drive.

DOE. Non-combatants, go home for your own safety.
PAPP. The opening salvo of red artillery and musketry, fired from loop holes in 52-story-high «January 6» banners, kills humans below indiscriminately. Uniformed red horsemen, flashing bayonets, trot into position around the base of their glass tower. Survivors split into two camps, red and blue. A cast of thousands clobbers itself. The fuss wakes the dead. Rich and poor, famous and anonymous, lose their homes, dodge bullets and shells. Everyone is a target. After a semblance of red hierarchy is established by vote (and challenges to the vote), a flanking maneuver by red vols has them double-quick into the Park. Their close formation at the Mall is short-lived. Clusters of shacks of tar-paper and tin have to be trampled. Units scatter to the «left» (hated word!) to sunbathe in the Sheep Meadow, while the main body pours straight across Bethesda Terrace, toppling the «Angel of the Waters». From Bow Bridge, superior officers commend infantry who board rental boats by force. Bemedaled boys photograph themselves before the impassive backdrop of the San Remo, Eldorado and Majestic. Unable to agree on a flag design, blues at Lincoln Center cannot rally around a standard. The 1,850th California, their flakiest regiment, presses in single file in every direction. Reinforcements burst from the 66th and 72nd Street subway stations. Mayhem on Broadway obliges a mounted brigadier general waving a Revolutionary War sword to gallop to West End Avenue, her 1,818th Illinois trailing on tender feet. Blue deserters shopping on Columbus and Amsterdam are shot with Spencer repeating rifles. A secret dossier pertaining to the red leader’s sex life is discovered inside Plato’s Retreat in the blue hotel basement.
DOE. The red boaster is inside with Apollodorus. Unless he is with Crito. I quote: «We do NOT acknowledge or honor the original stewards of this land, the Munsee Lenape.» He is beet red. Look for yourselves.
PAPP. A 20th precinct police captain preaches the wisdom of barricades. Sensing a trap, a red spy creeps away to her army’s momentary HQ, the American Museum of Natural History.

Red boss impersonates Alaskan Brown Bear in HQ’s Hall of North American Mammals. Chief of staff distributes hush money, releases statement: «A case of mistaken identity. We are invertebrates. Fake arrest.» A fat cigar starts a fire. Boss skedaddles in a golf cart disguised as maintenance equipment. Building collapses under weight of military excess. ‘Bye, natural history. ‘Bye, cornerstone laid by President Grant. ‘Bye, Margaret Mead. The farthest corners of the planetarium are reduced to ashes. Across 81st Street, the Beresford has turned bipartisan field hospital. Blue casualties on stretchers go up and down the backstairs past «Fronti Nulla Fides» (Don’t Trust Appearances) on the armorial shield of the brass elevator, which is out of order. A defense contractor delivers burlap sacks containing sand or money to the Beresford’s setback terraces. A red private, peeing into Conservatory Water, screams «It’s not a violation of the U.S. Constitution!» Another destroys a toy sailboat for the hell/fun of it. The private with the public bladder is pardoned as hopelessly «green» (hated word!) before losing his head at 11:15 am on schist castle walls. Red deserters with dough sneak away to appraise real estate on Madison, Park and Lexington. On the Ramble’s twisting paths, a rumor spreads about a national emergency near Belvedere Castle, design by Calvert Vaux and architect Jacob Wrey, completed in 1872. Red skirmishers identify celebrities out in broad daylight during rehearsal of a communist’s anti-war play at the Delacorte Theater. The blood-thirsty 1st Florida will lead the red charge after selfies in heroic-style regalia on schist ramparts with sweeping views of Turtle Pond and the Great Lawn. A spanking-new flotilla of red-commissioned destroyers in the Reservoir guns its engines. Yanking his blue mother’s arm, a red brat demands the same toys for his bathtub. During a red pep talk from the altar of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the paunchy boss, razzmatazzing his suits (fake-smart bureaucrats in his war cabinet), promises to pay for the completion of the sacred space if the approaching blues are slaughtered quickly/economically. Naming rights may be on the table/altar afterward. The collection plate has enough coin to hire a helicopter to whisk him away from the combat zone to his hotel. Motivational chanting wafts through open three-ton bronze doors 18-feet-high, wafts under carvings which symbolize «Welcome» to peoples from around the world. Neighborhood children frolic in jets of water shooting from open fire hydrants, until they have to run for their lives. Persuaded by his advisors to survey the carnage in person, the red capo rallies the wounded and dying, condemns them in private, forgets them. His bodyguard fulfills its final mission of executing all but one member of the red party. Defeated, alone and very red, a paunchy figure, muttering to itself, pounds the pavement for the first and last time. Blues and reds hug in the streets. A ghostly white loser trips on the steps of Grant’s Tomb into an unmarked grave. The nightmare is over. Cocktails are served on the roof of the Henrik Hudson.
 
What the critics are saying
«I am grooving on the narrative style & flow, with almost prose poem feel. Robert Smithson is in here.»
«Ha!»
 
Acknowledgments
Books
Posh Portals (2020), Andrew Alpern
Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Billie Holiday with William Dufty
Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale–Morningside Heights (2020), Jim Mackin
notablenewyorkers.com, Jim Mackin
Lunch Poems (1964), esp. Steps, Frank O’Hara
Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918-1923 (2014)
Mother Courage and Her Children (2006), Playbill®
Mansions in the Clouds (1986), Steve Ruttenbaum
Songs
I Wished on the Moon (1935), singer: Billie Holiday, lyrics: Dorothy Parker.
God Bless the Child (1942), singer: Billie Holiday, lyrics: Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.
America from West Side Story (1957), singer: Chita Rivera, lyrics: Stephen Sondheim, music: Leonard Bernstein.
 
Selected Research
Es sagt, es liebt uns (2026), Emre Akal
Just City (2024), Jennifer Baum
Before Central Park (2022), Sara Cedar Miller
Werke 4: Die Stücke 2 (1967-77), Heiner Müller
Twelfth Night (The Public Theater, NYC, 2025), William Shakespeare
Theater heute
Die Volksbühne, Berlin
The Wooster Group, NYC
 
Dedicatee
Ruth Hennessy, 180 West End Avenue and 44 Morningside Drive, singer, actress, speech therapist, aunt
 
rev. May 12, 2026