I'm "The Most Happy Fella" Because of Encores! at NY City Centerby Randi / April 17, 2014
In Martin McDonagh’s fantastic, heartbreaking comedy “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, Daniel Radcliffe proves that he’s got more in him than Harry Potter. With great respect for the humorous yet depressing subject matter, Radcliffe and an insanely talented ensemble cast give this play its best imaginable incarnation.
Radcliffe plays a poor crippled lad named Billy living on the island of Inishmaan, Ireland in the 1930s or thereabouts. His parents died when he was a baby – some taunt Billy (really ‘Crippled Billy’, as this town primarily full of assholes calls him; Inishmaan didn’t get the memo about bullying) by saying his parents killed themselves to get away from his poor crippled babiness. Billy was taken in by his two ‘aunties’, played by Gillian Hanna and Ingrid Craigie, who are freaking hilarious Irish perfection. Seriously, the play opens with the two of them deadpanning near nonsense and if that went on for 2 hours, with Radcliffe never showing up, the audience probably would have been ok with it.
One of the aunties looks exactly like Marla Hooch and the other talks to stones when things get rough. The aunties get more than their fair share of gossip from Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt), who has the worst name since I thought Conchita Wurst was a real name. JPM comes by the aunties’ shoppe (which is overflowing with canned peas) every day, sharing bits of ‘news’, including such winners as whose cat bit whose rabbit or some such, and in return demands eggs and what not.
One of the bits of news he shares is that a Hollywood film crew is filming on the nearby island of Inishmore and wants to cast locals!! Squee! says the whole town. We all want to be in the Hollywood moving pictures! This kind of random turn of events sets the main ‘plot’ in motion, thought the play isn’t really plot-driven so much as character-driven and it would have been equally effective without this whole, well, plot. Anyway, the Crip hears this news and believes it to be his chance to make something of himself.
Johnnypateenmike seems pretty darn annoying, and not just because of his name, and kind of assy, but of course our first impression is super wrong because this is a play and we have to learn that we’re not always right about red-nosed greasy-haired Irish men who drink a lot. Our first impression is also wrong, though moving from the opposite direction, of Babbybobby, another unfortunately named male considering babby = baby in Ireland speak. He seems pretty sensitive and kind at first, helping Billy get to Inishmore to try out for the film crew. But he shows himself to be a crazy kind of sensitive in that when he is offended he beats the shit out of crippled boys. But he does agree to stop calling him Crippled Billy (before he cripples him even more), so that’s something.
Babbybobby takes Billy across the sea or whatever body of water is legendarily difficult to cross but reasonably doable in a handmade canoe. Although the other characters were laughing at Billy’s desire to try out for the film crew, they actually end up wanting him to come to Hollywood for a proper screen test. Yay Billy! He goes without telling his aunties what he’s up to, and rumor spreads (that Billy himself may or may not have started) that he is dying and left to die in solitude. Prettayyy dire. But then he comes back. But then he probably is dying anyway. There’s a lot of great dramatic irony. You should read or see the play.
The most electric member of this superb ensemble (freal) is Sarah Greene as Helen, who is pretty much the Irish ginger lass version of Reese Witherspoon’s Melanie Spooner from “Sweet Home Alabama”. (Actually, whichever one of these came second may have stolen the character from the other.) Melanie was famous for attaching dynamite to a cat to blow up a bank; Helen kills a neighbor’s cat for money. (Kind of also like Angel Dumott Schunard BUT NOT NEARLY AS AWESOME.) At first, as Helen’s first scene features her recounting how she hit or egged some priests for inappropriate touching, I was like, oh wow this chick ROCKS! Beat those priests! But as we observe Helen, her ballsiness evidences its tendency toward sadism. Maybe it’s a result of her being treated as women were and still are, but like you could adapt to be more Daenarys and less Ramsey Snow.
Anyway, this total crazy bitch eggs things and people any chance she gets. To demonstrate this, the production destroys at least a dozen real eggs during every performance. I almost leapt down from my box to stop her. Ok, so having a young girl throw eggs a lot shows that she is ‘fun’ and ‘rambunctious’ and ‘confident’, but really it’s just sad and wasteful and unnecessary to use real eggs when we already understand the character. They were going to be chickens! And instead of at least being used as eggs so the many lives lost in their production wouldn’t be completely in vain, they are cracked upon another ginger’s head and thrown at bedsheets acting as movie screens. UGH anger. Between this and the eggs Andy Karl drinks every show in “Rocky”, this Broadway season is not cruelty-free.
ANYWAY. That other ginger being egged so much is Helen’s brother Bartley, who is kind of lovable and sweet, but he’s completely incapable of deflecting his sister’s constant need to beat the shit out of someone. All this kid wants is American candies, or in a pinch any candies, which he persistently asks the aunties for in hilarious bits. The best such bit is when Auntie Marla Hooch just keeps repeating “We have what you see!” in tones of increasing impatience. (He calls candies ‘sweeties’ but we will not stoop to such low levels because it’s a terrible, awful, no good word in that awful trend of taking the defining trait and making a noun of it WHICH IS BULLSHIT. Add to my list of verboten words ‘tasty’, ‘brekkie’, ‘choccy’, ‘biccie’, and more we will get to at some point in the future.)
For some reason, Billy is crazy so crazy in love with Helen, which I don’t get unless he believes that shit about how the meanest kids in elementary school really just had crushes on you or something because otherwise he is just a glutton for punishment. I mean she treats him so terribly, making fun of his ailments and telling terrible stories about his parents. God she’s the worst (but the actress is amazing. And looks exactly like Emma Stone.).
Radcliffe’s affectations of the deformities are so well done that, while at first they are shocking, they become so accepted and you get used to it. It’s an amazing physical performance, as he swings one of his legs around and keeps one arm bent at his shoulder. Very strange. Anyway, Crippled Billy goes to Hollywood, and in the second act we wonder if he made it, or if he’s actually dying, or dead. Then we think the question is answered, as Radcliffe’s performs the show’s biggest “Watch Me Acting” scene, in which he convulses and coughs and prays and cries out to his deceased parents and clutches things, as he dies. It’s pretty heartbreaking…yet it seems like a manifestation of a playwright’s manic excess and not like anything the character would do. It was like someone exclaiming in Shakespearean monologues when a train is late (which I do but still). But it all makes sense when we learn later that this ‘scene’ we saw, Billy’s death, was actually Billy’s screen test! And it went badly and caused the producers to send him back home! So, like, knowing this is even more impressive on Radcliffe’s part. He had to act this big huge scene as dramatically as all get out, and expertly do it poorly. No easy feat.
For about two minutes everything seems hunky-dory, with the aunties and Billy reunited, but being a dark Irish play, everything goes to shit soon after. In the span of maybe five minutes, we learn from Johnnypateenmike the truth about Billy’s parents, and it is a doozy. Possibly the saddest thing ever and reminiscent of a part from Benjamin Button. And in that moment JPM becomes like the greatest man alive. Aw. Then, just as the rumors about Billy’s terminal illness are revealed as lies he introduced himself, we learn that lying about having bad diseases angers the gods or something and will lead them to give the liar in question the very disease they lied about having, in an ironic twist of fate. Pretty f-ing sad, Ireland. But none of it seems overwrought or theatrical. The play, so expertly produced and acted, leaves you not feeling dejected but feeling lucky to have witnessed such insight into human emotion and the randomness of fortune. It’s definitely one of the best of the season.
One of the aunties looks exactly like Marla Hooch and the other talks to stones when things get rough. The aunties get more than their fair share of gossip from Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt), who has the worst name since I thought Conchita Wurst was a real name. JPM comes by the aunties’ shoppe (which is overflowing with canned peas) every day, sharing bits of ‘news’, including such winners as whose cat bit whose rabbit or some such, and in return demands eggs and what not.
One of the bits of news he shares is that a Hollywood film crew is filming on the nearby island of Inishmore and wants to cast locals!! Squee! says the whole town. We all want to be in the Hollywood moving pictures! This kind of random turn of events sets the main ‘plot’ in motion, thought the play isn’t really plot-driven so much as character-driven and it would have been equally effective without this whole, well, plot. Anyway, the Crip hears this news and believes it to be his chance to make something of himself.
Johnnypateenmike seems pretty darn annoying, and not just because of his name, and kind of assy, but of course our first impression is super wrong because this is a play and we have to learn that we’re not always right about red-nosed greasy-haired Irish men who drink a lot. Our first impression is also wrong, though moving from the opposite direction, of Babbybobby, another unfortunately named male considering babby = baby in Ireland speak. He seems pretty sensitive and kind at first, helping Billy get to Inishmore to try out for the film crew. But he shows himself to be a crazy kind of sensitive in that when he is offended he beats the shit out of crippled boys. But he does agree to stop calling him Crippled Billy (before he cripples him even more), so that’s something.
Babbybobby takes Billy across the sea or whatever body of water is legendarily difficult to cross but reasonably doable in a handmade canoe. Although the other characters were laughing at Billy’s desire to try out for the film crew, they actually end up wanting him to come to Hollywood for a proper screen test. Yay Billy! He goes without telling his aunties what he’s up to, and rumor spreads (that Billy himself may or may not have started) that he is dying and left to die in solitude. Prettayyy dire. But then he comes back. But then he probably is dying anyway. There’s a lot of great dramatic irony. You should read or see the play.
The most electric member of this superb ensemble (freal) is Sarah Greene as Helen, who is pretty much the Irish ginger lass version of Reese Witherspoon’s Melanie Spooner from “Sweet Home Alabama”. (Actually, whichever one of these came second may have stolen the character from the other.) Melanie was famous for attaching dynamite to a cat to blow up a bank; Helen kills a neighbor’s cat for money. (Kind of also like Angel Dumott Schunard BUT NOT NEARLY AS AWESOME.) At first, as Helen’s first scene features her recounting how she hit or egged some priests for inappropriate touching, I was like, oh wow this chick ROCKS! Beat those priests! But as we observe Helen, her ballsiness evidences its tendency toward sadism. Maybe it’s a result of her being treated as women were and still are, but like you could adapt to be more Daenarys and less Ramsey Snow.
Anyway, this total crazy bitch eggs things and people any chance she gets. To demonstrate this, the production destroys at least a dozen real eggs during every performance. I almost leapt down from my box to stop her. Ok, so having a young girl throw eggs a lot shows that she is ‘fun’ and ‘rambunctious’ and ‘confident’, but really it’s just sad and wasteful and unnecessary to use real eggs when we already understand the character. They were going to be chickens! And instead of at least being used as eggs so the many lives lost in their production wouldn’t be completely in vain, they are cracked upon another ginger’s head and thrown at bedsheets acting as movie screens. UGH anger. Between this and the eggs Andy Karl drinks every show in “Rocky”, this Broadway season is not cruelty-free.
ANYWAY. That other ginger being egged so much is Helen’s brother Bartley, who is kind of lovable and sweet, but he’s completely incapable of deflecting his sister’s constant need to beat the shit out of someone. All this kid wants is American candies, or in a pinch any candies, which he persistently asks the aunties for in hilarious bits. The best such bit is when Auntie Marla Hooch just keeps repeating “We have what you see!” in tones of increasing impatience. (He calls candies ‘sweeties’ but we will not stoop to such low levels because it’s a terrible, awful, no good word in that awful trend of taking the defining trait and making a noun of it WHICH IS BULLSHIT. Add to my list of verboten words ‘tasty’, ‘brekkie’, ‘choccy’, ‘biccie’, and more we will get to at some point in the future.)
For some reason, Billy is crazy so crazy in love with Helen, which I don’t get unless he believes that shit about how the meanest kids in elementary school really just had crushes on you or something because otherwise he is just a glutton for punishment. I mean she treats him so terribly, making fun of his ailments and telling terrible stories about his parents. God she’s the worst (but the actress is amazing. And looks exactly like Emma Stone.).
Radcliffe’s affectations of the deformities are so well done that, while at first they are shocking, they become so accepted and you get used to it. It’s an amazing physical performance, as he swings one of his legs around and keeps one arm bent at his shoulder. Very strange. Anyway, Crippled Billy goes to Hollywood, and in the second act we wonder if he made it, or if he’s actually dying, or dead. Then we think the question is answered, as Radcliffe’s performs the show’s biggest “Watch Me Acting” scene, in which he convulses and coughs and prays and cries out to his deceased parents and clutches things, as he dies. It’s pretty heartbreaking…yet it seems like a manifestation of a playwright’s manic excess and not like anything the character would do. It was like someone exclaiming in Shakespearean monologues when a train is late (which I do but still). But it all makes sense when we learn later that this ‘scene’ we saw, Billy’s death, was actually Billy’s screen test! And it went badly and caused the producers to send him back home! So, like, knowing this is even more impressive on Radcliffe’s part. He had to act this big huge scene as dramatically as all get out, and expertly do it poorly. No easy feat.
For about two minutes everything seems hunky-dory, with the aunties and Billy reunited, but being a dark Irish play, everything goes to shit soon after. In the span of maybe five minutes, we learn from Johnnypateenmike the truth about Billy’s parents, and it is a doozy. Possibly the saddest thing ever and reminiscent of a part from Benjamin Button. And in that moment JPM becomes like the greatest man alive. Aw. Then, just as the rumors about Billy’s terminal illness are revealed as lies he introduced himself, we learn that lying about having bad diseases angers the gods or something and will lead them to give the liar in question the very disease they lied about having, in an ironic twist of fate. Pretty f-ing sad, Ireland. But none of it seems overwrought or theatrical. The play, so expertly produced and acted, leaves you not feeling dejected but feeling lucky to have witnessed such insight into human emotion and the randomness of fortune. It’s definitely one of the best of the season.
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“The Autumn of My Springtime” at Tbilisi’s Marionette Theatre
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about “The Autumn of My Springtime”, at Tbilisi, Georgia’s famed Marionette Theatre.
Well, this is a first! Puppets scare me so I haven’t really sought out puppet shows – or as the fancy people call the fancier kind, ‘marionette theatre’. But a visit to the Rezo Gabriadze Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia (not that Georgia) (unless you thought of the former-Soviet country (then you’d be right)) is one of the must-dos when visiting that city. I don’t know about you, but when I think marionette show, I think of John Cusack creepy AF in “Being John Malkovich”, a performance that still gives me nightmares because he made Malkovich’s entire life about creepy puppets?? Malko was in the og sunken place! So sad. Or I think of the ‘I got no strings to hold me down’ bit from Pinocchio and that’s equally terrifying so yeah, I’d usually say nah thanks to marionettes with their creepy faces and their creepy small but emotive hands. But now I will first think of Rezo Gabriadze’s surprisingly poignant show “The Autumn of My Springtime” and how wonderful it is. I’m not rushing out to see more scary puppets, but I fully insist that all Tbilisi visitors do.
The Gabriadze theatre performs their marionette shows in repertory, with current offerings including 4 well received plays written and directed by Rezo himself. Everyone (niche theatre reviewers) had been talking about one play in particular called “Stalingrad” which you can imagine is important in these parts so we were initially disappointed that a showing of that play didn’t line up with our free night in Tbilisi. But now I’m so glad that that show wasn’t on because the one we saw was fantastic. “The Autumn of My Springtime”, performed in Georgian with English supertitles, tells the story of an old Soviet couple, Valram and Domna, and their…pet? friend? confidante? bird named Boris. When the show begins with Boris the orange bird saying “Two things amaze me, morality and the stars”, you know shit’s gonna be interesting.
The show begins with old man Valram, a very old man indeed, talking to his bird-friend Boris about how tired his poor heart is. The puppeteers, five adults dressed in black, soon vanish into the background and you focus only on the intricate, perfectly tuned movements of the ancient doll. Anyone who has seen “Avenue Q” knows how easy it is to go from “How am I going to focus on the puppets and not stare at the human actors the entire time?” to “Omg I forgot these were puppets”. Valram’s hands lifting to gesture despite it taking all his energy was so realistic and moving that when he soon died (like five minutes in, so not a spoiler) (actually we’re going to be giving all the spoilers but odds are you aren’t seeing this so whatevs), it was quite sad.
So Boris takes it upon himself to look after Domna, the ancient wife of Valram, now that her husband is gone and she needs to pay the bills. Boris is often referred to endearingly (or maybe grammatically; it might just be a sentence structure thing but that’s less adorable) as Boria, and little Boria is all that Domna has now (though the relationship is still unclear) (as it is a bird). Domna’s mannerisms were like Valram’s, that precise articulation that makes you forget that they’re puppets. The work was so impressive. Boris the Bird’s puppeteer had a much less precise job, since the little orange shock of feathers really just had to keep fluttering the whole time, but he was onstage for most of the show and I assume that gets exhausting.
Boria sells all of Domna’s belongings to a moneylender friend to get her going, and I’m prettayyyyy sure the moneylender friend’s name was – I shit you not – SHALOM. At first I thought the dude riding the bicycle maniacally and singing about his life and money and biking was just repeatedly shouting Shalom so the audience knew he was a jew but I realized/husband told me that he was just shouting his name over and over, because that’s less weird, and that his name happened to be Shalom. Of course it was. And of course the moneylender was Jewish. Oh mild racism.
After the super random moneylender-on-a-giant-bicycle scene where I thought hmm this is kind of nutty, it went super off the rails nutty, to places I never could have imagined, yet remained, somehow, grounded in relatable humanity. The next scene featured little Boria going to the bank and talking to his friend…the statue on the door of the bank. The statue was named Dionidas, and he was in love with a girl who danced around nearby. Like a human girl, I think. He referred to her as his flora, his fauna, and Boris saw an opportunity in his friend’s love. Boris helps Dionidas the talking statue and the human lady reconcile, so the statue is supes happy and opens the doors (his torso?) and lets his birdfriend take some money from the bank. No big deal, easy as pie. The harder part is for Boria to find a way to give the money to Domna without her knowing that he robbed a bank. (Does it count as robbing if the guarding statue lets you take the money?) So he repeatedly just ‘happens’ to find oh a 25 ruble note here, a 25 ruble note there, for Domna’s benefit. When he tells her how he found each one, he begins by saying “Oh I laughed so hard, you wouldn’t believe how hard I laughed – I found this 25 ruble note in a tree/in a bucket/falling from an airplane/pinned to an accordionist’s face” (these are all real examples). Finally Domna is like “Stop lying to me ya damn bird! I know you didn’t just find this money!” but she does get all her possessions back from Shylock so she kind of doesn’t care?
There’s no time for figuring out Domna’s position on the matter though, because Boris is ready to parrrrtayyyyy. The bird (remember, this is a bird) goes to what looks like a British Christmas party with lots of drunk worker-looking men and lots of drunk women dressed like secretaries in a place that looks like a bowling alley. They forgo puppets for this scene and have mostly giant cardboard people bopping up and down. There’s a big toast Boris and the men give and this is literally what it was: “God bless Georgian heavy industry and its women with light morals!” Then Boris may have raped a woman but it was all very unclear considering that he is a bird and the woman was a gigantic cardboard cutout and before you can say ‘wait what the hell’ the cardboard cutouts of all the women lift up their skirts to show their underwear and I was like whaaaat isssss happpppening. This was by far the most random scene I’ve seen in pretty much anything ever. Also it was unnecessary; I don’t get why it was in this show, but I guess that toast was pretty good.
But things aren’t all fun and games for little Boria, because the cops may be on to him. He did rob a bank, remember? The cops – and one giant officer on a giant horse – barge into Domna’s house since she is his main known associate looking for the little ‘sky tramp’ as they amazingly call Boris. But Domna’s like ‘I haven’t seen him in a while but also I’m not his master or anything he is a wild bird who just happens to talk and do human stuff like rob banks and drink alcohol’ and the cops are like ‘well if you see him tell him he’s in big trouble mister because he robbed a bank and also he flew into a movie theatre and tried to kiss the projection of Vivian Leigh and ended up poking holes in the screen (this is a real thing they said) and also he is causing all kinds of problems and ruckus and the people are outraged because they hate sky tramps and we need to arrest him’ and despite Boris being the only friend she has in the world, Domna doesn’t really seem too broken up about it, but I guess that’s that Soviet external show of strength that babushkas pride themselves on.
Meanwhile, Boris is out flying by the window of a woman named Ninel, yes a human woman whom he is in love with. And she’s in love with him. We learn from their conversation that they fell in love in middle school (???) when she was trying to learn and he was flapping outside the window distracting her and now they can’t be together and they bemoan the fact by talking shit about Charles Darwin. I’m not kidding. Boria yells “Damn you Charles Darwin and your ape ancestors!” and Ninel cries “What did Charles Darwin ever know about love” and we were kicking each other so hard.
But unfortunately, the cops find Boris and trap him in a bucket (“anything but the bucket!” Boris screams) and he goes to jail, the awful kind where he has to wear black and white striped clothes on his tiny bird body and it’s kind of hilarious. Domna makes the arduous climb to visit him and despite her stern demeanor she shows how much she cares in their conversation about how he’s holding up. And in this exchange comes my favorite line in the whole thing that made me laugh so hard in a quiet theatre where no one else thought this was a particularly funny line but I was there CACKLING. Domna inquires about the conditions and, wanting to protect his health from the outside chill, she tells Boris: “Ask the other prisoners if you can change beds, farther from the window – tell them that you’re sick, say you’re a bird…” SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! HAHAHAHAH I was struggling not to scream-laugh. Like I’m p sure they’d know he was a bird from the start but I loveeee using that as an excuse.
Domna’s little peasant life is rocked quite a bit from the scandal, and she tries to avoid the prying eyes and unwelcome comments from nosy neighbors. But she can’t get away from one such neighbor, a very bad man who corners her and comments on Boris: “If he had raped someone, say a sparrow, or a pigeon, or a nightingale, I would have defended him, saying it was a crime of passion. But stealing money from the communal funds is unforgivable.” Man aliiive this is some commie bullshit! It reminded me of a North Korean movie I once saw that repeated lines like “all praise our great leader for allowing this” and “we are all important parts of the machine that makes our great country turn” or whatever crap like that from dictatorships. Yeesh.
Anyway, the day of Boris’s trial arrives, and since he’s hundo p guilty the big decision is whether Domna should be punished as an accomplice. Boria is adamant that his friend is innocent, even though she benefited from his crime, because she didn’t know and she’s just a poor old lady who will die soon anyway. The prosecutor is really mean and scary but luckily the judge – a GIGANTIC cardboard cutout of an old man in a double-breasted cardigan, because that’s what judges wear while sitting on the bench in any country – lets Domna go. Boris is sentenced to a life spent in a window display in a hunter’s shop, which is RULL disturbing but I guess better than the gulag? Boris asks for permission to give a speech before beginning his sentence and the judge allows it, and the speech he wanted to give was just to scream his lungs out at the mean prosecutor and it was SPELL-BINDING. The best part by far was when Boris A BIRD yells at him “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” true story!
Okay I know I’ve shared all absolutely ridiculous or hilarious bits of this play and you’re probably thinking ‘um didn’t you say that this was moving and poignant” and it really was despite well everything I’ve been talking about. Through all the jokes and things I found to be funny even if they weren’t jokes, they were telling the story of a woman who had no hope in the world except this friend, who risked and gave up everything to help her survive. And to top that all off, he wasn’t human, yet he was the only one to show some humanity. And then he got kind of out of control and broke tons of laws but isn’t that the most human part of all? The ending packed a punch, with Boria in his shop window, passing his time, when the officer comes to visit and tells him to go mourn for Domna because no one else is. Yes, Domna has died, and Boris needs to pay his respects at her grave, which is next to Valram’s, where we began. Boris, however, is shot when he approaches – whether randomly, or by the hunter whose shop he sits in, or by the cops who may have set him up, it’s unclear (I’m going with the cops though) – and he struggles with all his might to make it atop his friends’ graves before his body gives out. It’s pretty dire, heartbreaking, as he makes it to his resting place with the people he cared about most. Boris says some deep stuff about humanity in his final moments as well as throughout the show, and despite being a bird, he nails the injustice and the sadness and the need for someone to care about you. And it’s quite lovely. AND he gives us incredible quotes that we’ve been shouting all week like SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! and “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” Anyway, go see puppet shows if you are ever in Tbilisi. Amazing work, Rezo.
AUDIENCE
All Russian tourists who were pretty okay, although we prepped for it to be the worst audience ever since it was a tourist thing so anything better than that was a nice surprise.
THEATRE
The theatre is a semi-small single room upstairs from the nice wooden lobby. There are only two bathroom stalls but that wasn’t a problem for me because I had THE BEST SEAT and you need to get it if you go – B1. The second row, but the first seat on that aisle for some reason sticks much further out that all the other rows so I was closest to the door! Heyoooo! They also had this amazing No Cell Phone symbol in the corner of the ceiling, which I believe every single theatre should have.
Lobby
best seat ever
best sign ever
Amelie the Musical Never Captures the Right Tone (or Tunes)
Musical theatre composers always say the test for what songs make the final score is rigorous and specific: They have to serve the story. The story comes first and the music needs to help tell it, whether by driving plot or developing characters. If the best song you’ve ever written doesn’t serve a purpose in the story, or just doesn’t fit the rest of the show, it needs to be cut. (That’s how we got the Hamilton Mixtape.) (Also how we got the incredible song “Come Down From That Tree” which we only know from Audra McDonald’s own recording of it because they wisely cut it from Once on this Island because it didn’t fit, even though it is a Best Song Ever.) I feel like most new musicals forget this test. Despite having so many productions in so many cities over the past four years, the London production of Amelie is full, packed, of songs that don’t pass the test. And the ones that do serve a purpose don’t fit the rest of the show, as the inconsistent tone only becomes more and more chaotic as the night goes on. It’s overall a poorly constructed show (funny since the actual physical construction/set design is the strongest part) with a confused purpose.
I don’t remember much about Amelie the movie, except that of course it was beyond whimsical and is probably responsible for the onslaught of manic-pixie-dreamgirls in the culture, or at least pale brunettes whose main personality trait is ‘quirky’. (PSA: Quirky/weird is not a personality.) A lot of my criticism of the ridiculous, messy story is likely taken straight from the movie. You might argue then that my problem is with the movie writers, not the creative team of the musical. And to that I’d say, what is this, Pretty Woman? Your job in adapting a film for the stage is not to copy and paste, failing to fix what needs to be fixed in order to work onstage. Whether this jumbled story worked in the film is completely irrelevant for stage purposes. They may have nailed the proper whimsical, eccentric tone in the movie, but trying the same things to achieve the same things in a different medium is bonkers and has resulted in an almost incoherent musical, with no discernible tone, objective, meaning, or intention.
With music by Daniel Messe (who wrote the music for the movie…and that score is excellent…so like…ah) and Nathan Tysen, and a book by Craig Lucas (who wrote one of my faves The Light in the Piazza which is also about a young girl who is, shall we say, not entirely there (so we were like…is that the only character he likes to write about because that’s problematic)), Amelie tells of a young French girl who lives through her imagination after a childhood of seclusion because her parents forking sucked. (Her mom gets killed by a man who jumps off Notre Dame, but he ALSO FIRST SHOOTS HIMSELF? Why? To make sure? What an asshole.) She decides to do a nice thing that makes someone else happy, so then she decides to do more nice things for other people and try to break out of her shell and maybe one day live in the real world. It sounds adorable! Except the things she does FORKING SUCK. Amelie the character is GODDAMN ASSHOLE. Is she supposed to be adorable? Is the whimsy supposed to make up for her assholiness? To quote Chidi-Janet: It does not. Makes it way worse.
The good deeds Amelie does include: finding a box under her floorboards and deciding to find its owner, which she does remarkably easily. To mark this occasion and her decision to do more good things, she…no, she doesn’t sing a song, her neighbor does, about being the old French man version of Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Glass character.
Then, in the café where she works, there’s a really terrifying man stalking one of her coworkers because they went on a date a year ago. Instead of calling the police and filing for a restraining order, and maybe alerting the French version of the FBI that this is for sure a future incel/supremacist who is going to murder women, Amelie…sets him up with her other friend. For this there is no excuse.
Then there’s the mean old grocer who is mean to the boy who works for him because he…loves figs? This kid gets a little song about figs. Amelie doesn’t get a solo in the entirety of Act I. In Act II, she feeds the old man fig tart and it somehow makes him nice. I don’t know.
At some point, she bumps into a man named Nino, who spends his time going through public photo booths, like the kind where you get a strip of 4 photos in black and white. He collects the discarded ones; it’s his art. It’s love at first sight and Amelie sings about how striking this unexpected feeling is…no, Nino sings a song about the photo booth light. One day he loses his collection of photos, and Amelie finds it. Instead of returning it to him, she plays infuriating games with him and keeps his prized possession from him for literally weeks, but I guess he finds that adorable. I was fuming. Give people their shit back. One of the games she plays includes…going to the sex shop where he works, disguising herself as a nun, and then running away scared when she realizes he’s going to come out and see her?? WHAT DID SHE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? What is this white nonsense.
Amid all of this is a weird and tacky obsession with the death of Princess Diana. It’s in poor taste. I get that that’s a big thing in the movie but man alive it felt gross. Amelie imagines a big mega funeral for herself, with Elton John performing…and Act I ends with a HUGE rocking Elton John number that again, did not fit the show AT ALL.
I’m going to repeat that Elton John gets a big Act I number but in a musical named after her, Amelie does not have a solo in the entirety of the first act (except for a mini reprise). She doesn’t even seem like the main character at any point. The tone of the show is inconsistent and even contradictory, just all over the place, with big ridiculous silly numbers performed by giant garden gnomes and Elton Johns along with offbeat, artsy introspective songs. I guess with the contrast of styles they wanted to capture some whimsy? But it just feels like nonsense. There’s no magic. There’s one or two great songs in Act II, one with Amelie at the piano, that shows how good this show could have been with more work, and more editing. Or any editing.
Fortunately, along with the wonderful set design, the cast is doing a great job trying to keep this material afloat. Audrey Brisson’s Amelie looks exactly right and gives a great performance. The show takes a memo from the John Doyle playbook and has the actors doubling as the orchestra, which is impressive, and everyone is pretty uniformly good to great. With the solid cast and design, the production is definitely decent, but unlike the Guardian I can’t get past the material.
INFORMATION
Amelie is playing at The Other Palace in London until February 1.
This theatre has one of those horrible no-center-aisle situations so be sure to book seats on or near the aisles if you want to avoid being the last person out. Bathrooms are outside in the bar area but ALSO down in the secrets bowels of the building, accessed via a door directly at the bottom of the stage on the house left side. It took me several visits to learn about these secret and much better bathrooms down in the hallways between the main house and the studio that no one would usually get to explore. So now I like to sit on the house left/stage right aisle.
There is a lot of unnecessary smoking, and whatever herbal cigarettes they are using almost made me pass out. I get that ‘it’s Paris’, but you’ve shown that in myriad other ways. I dare anyone involved in theatre to defend well the use of cigarettes in a show. It’s never really necessary and instead is a health hazard to all and I don’t understand how it’s legal.
There’s also a super loud gunshot that shocked the shirt out of me. There was a small sign with all the trigger warnings on the door to the theatre but the ticket takers were blocking it when we entered, so, great work.
The first act ended at 20:43 and the show ended at 22:15. I felt every minute of it.
