New York's Good Old Days Were Often Far From Nice

The phrase “a blast from the past” comes immediately to mind.

A scene from “A Glance at New York” at the Axis Company.

Axis Company has shaken the dust off a lowbrow stage work called “A Glance at New York” that was a hit in 1848 and injected it with a huge dose of 21st-century adrenaline. The players don’t so much perform the show as attack you with it. Who knows how this play, by Benjamin A. Baker, was rendered in 1848, but here it’s a visual and aural treat.

The story, such as it is, concerns a rube named George (Ian Tooley) who comes to the city and is fleeced repeatedly by street swindlers. The character who apparently electrified those pre-electricity audiences, though, was Mose (Jim Sterling), a burly firefighter with a gift for slugging people.

Axis serves up their sketchy tale with ridiculous declamatory deliveries and elaborate costumes (by Lee Harper and Matthew Simonelli) that might be described as thrift shop “Masterpiece Theater.” Mr. Sterling is decked out like Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs of New York,” and everyone else appears to have escaped from a Dickens novel. The griminess feels almost contagious; when you get home, your bathtub will never have looked so good.

The director, Randy Sharp, keeps the actors in constant motion, except when they pause to deliver, with incongruous beauty, a few musical numbers. Why “A Glance at New York” was popular way back when will be no clearer to you at the show’s end than it was at the beginning, but you’ll still be wishing that the performance, which clocks in at about 50 minutes, hadn’t ended so soon.

“A Glance at New York” continues through Nov. 16 at the Axis Company, 1 Sheridan Square, Greenwich Village; (212) 352-3101.