"The Essential Vegan Travel Guide" & Interview with the Author, The Vegan Word!by Randi / June 30, 2016
One time, in this screenwriting competition I entered, the judges said my characters were flames (that means good) but that there wasn’t really a plot driving their actions forward. If I could, I would go back in time and say to them, well, invariably white dudes, listen, August Wilson did it, so…
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a play from 1982, not a new play as I must admit I thought because I never heard of it before it won the Olivier for Best Revival of a Play this year. That’s the Oliviers (West End), not the Tonys (Broadway), so just keep that in mind. (Actually it won the Tony for Best Play when it premiered!) And this is a good production, with some powerful performances and an excellent set, but goodness, I did not feel the material working. There is no plot. Nothing really happens, and yet so much feels about to happen that it’s almost disappointing.
Ma Rainey was the mother (get it, ma) of the blues, an incredible musical talent and mentor to other queens like Bessie Smith. In fact, my previous exposure to her was mostly due to Mo’Nique in the movie “Bessie” with Queen Latifah. She was so good, Latifs. They both were! I would have loved if the movie showed more of Ma and her relationship with Bessie, so I was so excited for a play that was all about her. Her life seemed beyond compelling. I was pumped!
I was also so psyched to hear her sing a lot, as I assumed she would. I mean, I knew it wasn’t produced as a musical, it was a play, but so was “Lady Day” and that was all music (2 hours with Billie Holiday – you’re gonna want it to be mostly music!). I figured it was technically a play because, while full of music, it wasn’t music that advanced the plot or composed part of the plot, as musicals are defined. (For laymen: “Pitch Perfect”, for example, isn’t a ‘musical’ despite being very musical, because the characters actively know they are singing and it’s not like they are living in song or singing their feelings instead of talking them. The music isn’t the plot.)
Well, surprise, Ma Rainey isn’t even that kind of play.
It’s mostly Ma’s band, four musicians with differing viewpoints on life and race, talking in the rehearsal room before Ma arrives to record a session, and then talking after Ma leaves the session. Ma is a featured character, if that. I’m sure if you know this in advance, you’re good to go, but I didn’t, so this was incredibly disappointing. Ma sang for about 20 seconds and it was RG because she was played by the great Sharon D. Clarke, but then it was all talk and no Ma.
So what is it about, this revered play from the esteemed August Wilson? It’s Chicago in the 1920s and the band is being taken advantage of by the white producers, of course, and arguing about race and their experience as black men at this time. They talk and argue and wait, along with the producers as they wait for Ma. And they wait some more. They’re being held in the basement rehearsal room in the recording studio, which we several parts of in this impressive set.
The four men are Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag (I can’t, best name ever), and Levee. Toledo is wise and cautious. Levee is a live wire who is loud and reckless. He’s obsessed with how he presents himself to the world and thinks he’s entitled to a lot more than he gets in life, which is undoubtedly true given both his talent and the fact that he’s a black man, but his abrasive attitude is a turnoff to even the people who could be his friends. While they wait, the men argue about their position in the world, about their struggles and how to get on, while Levee shows off his new white shoes that he bought. He also gives some new songs he wrote to the white producers and is sure they are going to buy them. We hear really upsetting stories from all the men, especially Levee’s personal background is enough to make you feel sympathetic for anyone. Everything they say reinforces how unjust and unfair society was and still is. Their commentary on race is compelling and provocative – it just doesn’t make for the most gripping plot.
When Ma comes really late, she sings a tiny bit, and pisses off the white producers because of how late everything is and because she demands that her stuttering nephew do the intro to the title song, which takes a while, and everyone gets pissed off, and then Ma leaves. The entire part that was advertised was the tiniest part of the show. Sharon was really good too. Darn.
After the session, the men retreat to their basement cave and argue more. Why aren’t they going home? (It’s unclear that they are waiting to be paid, which I just looked up.) They finished the session. I was confused! And one of them was fired! I was like past Bunuel asking questions of future Bunuel’s art in “Midnight in Paris’ – “why don’t they just leave?” Somehow the little micro (or not so micro) aggressions build and build to a point that you can’t believe it reaches.
The play, depending on how it’s performed, can build to this climax in a way where even though it is a shock, it’s not a surprise that something catastrophic happened like this. But in this production, it was so unexpected and didn’t feel earned. Not like ooh that’s an intriguing surprise, more like, that’s action from a different play entirely. How it was directed and acted, no matter how good the individual parts were, it didn’t feel like they had a cohesive goal. I honestly don’t know what the play was trying to achieve. The tone was all over the place. Amid the harrowing stories, there would be this air of levity in the direction of the show, almost treating it like a comedy, and I couldn’t tell what it wanted to be.
Also, I get that most people probably are more familiar with this show, but I found the advertising misleading. The main show art is of Ma at a microphone. If you saw that, what would you think the show was about? Same as I did, right? I should have done research but most people don’t. Not since the advertising campaign for “The Scottsboro Boys” in London have I found marketing materials to be so misleading. Nonetheless, I have to applaud the acting across the board and the production values. A lot of the men’s long talks were provocative and challenging, and it really does say genuinely important things about injustice and race. As monologues, they are effective, but as a play it is stagnant.
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Lungs but Socially Distanced: The Perfect Play for a Pandemic, Though Not a Perfect Play
Recently, the Old Vic held pandemic-safe performances of last year’s hit production of Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt I-always-want-to-say-Lucas-but-it’s-definitely-not-Matt-Lucas Smith. Since I missed the regular run of this modern four-hander (yes correct), I was super excited to catch this version – which was performed live at the Old Vic, but to an empty auditorium and streamed to a virtual audience. The two actors also stayed six feet apart on the stage, with two different cameras on them at all times. Honestly, it was the perfect play to test this sort of format. Since it’s about a distressed couple, it worked well to see both characters the entire time separated by space and camera angles, and since it’s a one-act it worked well for me to be closer to a bathroom break without disrupting anyone (I love an interval).
The livestream situation was better considered and executed than the play itself. Duncan Macmillan’s present-day look at a couple deciding whether it’s morally wrong to have children was, shall we say, relevant to our interests. We were really excited to see a deep-dive into the ethical considerations that millennials discuss as part of this decision, and to see how they grapple with these considerations, how they make this extremely difficult decision. And we got the first part. The two famously talented actors have the early parts of the conversations that we’ve all had, with the same comments about carbon footprints, but then…then they just decide they want a kid, without applying the conversation to that decision at all. Then that aspect of the play – the aspect that it was billed as being entirely about – was finished.
Instead, it became a look at this couple’s particular dysfunctions from then on, like any other play about a couple. And it was compelling, but I found it too disjointed. It was like two separate plays morphed into one. The first part, about the ethics of procreating while the world is on fire, ended just when it would have been the most compelling: once they actually decided to have a baby, once they had to actually own their decision and defend it, the part that would have been novel.
On its own, the second half was an interesting look at this couple that I was not rooting for (but maybe I’m biased against them because the glaring, grimacing Matt Smith at times looked like a goddamn bare-hands murderer (i.e. a man who doesn’t need a weapon; he will kill you with his bare hands), while Foy looked like a sweet lil bunny rabbit (not helped by her juvenile overalls, which I LOVED)), but it felt like a completely different show, seen through a lens that wasn’t in play at the start and with some hella shocking time jumps. The only common thread throughout was that they always wondered if they were good people – they said the phrase ‘good people’ about themselves so many times that it’s a shame that was already taken as a play title. But they never actually tried to, or wanted to, answer that question.
Still, it was wonderful to see a live play even though I wasn’t there. Knowing they were performing right then was definitely on improvement on these past recordings we’ve been watching, although nothing like being in a theatre. Also, I can’t see this working for anything other than two- or four-handers, which means the big shows (and musicals) won’t be coming in live to my living room.
INFORMATION
The Old Vic’s In Camera series continues on their website with rehearsed play readings.
The stream occurred over Zoom, which is annoying, because Zoom sucks. Also, it’s kind of ridonk that even shows where the whole audience is home still start 10 minutes late.
And because I can’t go a day without finding a mistake in a leading paper, I have to point out that The Guardian’s piece on this livestream event said “although all audience members will have the same view, tickets will be priced from £10–65 with virtual theatre-goers asked to give what they can to help support the theatre.” Erm, no, theatre-goers weren’t ‘asked to give’ shit; we bought tickets from the website just as we normally would and were stuck with whatever price point we could get (the 10 pounders were gone quick and we weren’t ‘asked’ to give more) for whatever date they showed us first. Luckily we didn’t get stuck with the £65 tickets but man alive I can’t imagine paying that much to look at my computer, no matter how good the show.
The Tragedy of the Horny Teenagers: Spring Awakening at the Almeida
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the new production of Spring Awakening at London’s Almeida theatre, which runs until Jan. 29.
One of the best productions in London right now is Rupert Goold’s new take on Spring Awakening, Duncan Sheik & Steven Sater’s Tony-winning musical that originally starred Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff as wee naked babies. The show tells of a bunch of mad horny German teens coming of age as the adults and authority figures in their lives try to keep them ignorant and in line, and the tragic ramifications of trying to control children in such a way. It’s a sad song, it’s a tragedy, one that always felt relevant in Bible-thumping-abortion-hating America, and it has a bit of extra resonance in this climate of the supposed grown-ups failing the youths (and extra extra rez for these particular yoots, trying to build careers in theatre while the grown-ups are like ‘nah theatre isn’t important enough to us, you could try coding?, also we’re gonna tell audiences they don’t need to wear masks anymore so they cough all over you and your shows will probably continually get cancelled’).
Any dreadful outcomes you might imagine resulting from adults keeping truth from kids and holding them to impossible standards and not telling them about what their own bodies can do and being abusive &c happen in Spring Awakening, but the incredible music, story-building, and energy of a youthful cast keep it from feeling like on onslaught of depression porn. Even though there’s so much tragedy and frustration, it’s shown with emotional poignancy that prevents the feeling of utter darkness. There’s also lots of humor, as you’d expect from a show with several songs about masturbating. I particularly loved Hanschen’s (I think?) line to another boy about studying together and maybe ‘doing a little Achilles and Patroclus’, which I now better appreciate having just read “The Song of Achilles”.
I had high hopes for this production, as Spring Awakening is one of my all-time favorite shows and scores that I grew up on, and I saw the original cast an exorbitant number of times and I consider the 2015 Deaf West Broadway production to be one of the top five greatest productions of anything ever done anywhere throughout history, and I am not exaggerating, so yeah going in I was like show me what you got, fire that sucker up and throw it at my face. I wish they were still taking some tips, because my #1 thing is that these kids needed to be miked. There were so many brilliant parts of the score that felt too quiet or literally went unheard against the loud band (not that they were too loud, just the voices were not loud enough). The worst victim of this was “Touch Me”, which never rose with that incredible crescendo that is written into it, when Otto (I think?) belts the best belted line of all-time ‘WHERE I GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHEN I GO THERE/NO MORE SHADOWWWWWWWWWWW ANYMORE’ I mean, it was just a lil quiet baby lullaby and I wanted to shout ‘SING OUT LOUISE’, it’s THE BEST LINE.
But otherwise, the staging is what makes this production special. It’s a small intimate space, and the stage is entirely giant steps so the cast goes up and down the whole time building insane calves. I loved the use of all the projections on the steps, from their own scribblings to their graffiti to the gravestones. Some of the staging was a miss for me — the glass cage of emotion (husbo and I were telepathically imitating Ron Burgundy to each other, confirmed post-show), the excessive silent pauses in Act II, and I still wish that the audience found out about Wendla at the same time as Melchior (it packs more punch). But overall it was thoughtful and provocative, and there were moments of actual gasp-worthy brilliance — the beginning of “All That’s Known”, when all the schoolboys come up from below the stage in a vertical line of desks (I mean, the MOTHERFORKING TIMING on that one), and the entirety of “Mirror Blue Night”, which I’ve never seen staged to so perfectly capture the emotional turmoil of Melchior at that moment. That in particular made me think much differently about a scene I usually am a tiny bit whatever about.
The cast is good, with their high energy making up for a lack of high calibre vocal performances. The standout by far is Laurie Kynaston as Melchior Gabor, which works out because Melchior carries the show. We last saw him in Florian Zeller’s The Son, which ALSO went VERY badly for him, so fingers crossed he one day gets to star in a comedy or at least some sort of death-free romp. As for their direction, I was not a fan at how over-the-top evil they made the adult characters. They were presented in a clownish way for humor, but their evil and wrongdoing when played straight is so much more powerful.
Although you probably don’t care, I’ve buried the lead here with the part that stands out most to me that I honestly can’t stop shouting about: The bonus track from the original cast album, Duncan Sheik’s song ‘There Once Was a Pirate’, is included in this! Not only that, it OPENS ACT II. Not only that, IT GETS A REPRISE IN THE FINALE. This marked one of the top five moments I’ve almost screamed in a theatre. What a shock. The song worked so well, and the staging of it the first time was poetic. Its reprise as an intro to the finale was fine, but I was left wanting with the finale in general, because they have rewritten my favorite lines of what is one of my favorite songs ever, “The Song of Purple Summer”. The way the voices have always split into harmonies on “a swallow brings/a song too hard to follow/that no one else can sing” always gives me the feels something terrible and seals the show emotionally for me, making everything make sense and provide hope in a Pandora’s-Box-after-all-the-endless-shit kind of way, especially since the song is about how a new dawn has to be rising. So to have that line gone, along with many others, was aaaaquite the theatrical blueballing. Nonetheless, this is altogether a wonderful, powerful production of one of the great modern musicals.
AUDIENCE
Okay so we could not get over two things: First, that these two jamokes dead front and center were maskless and like BREATHING ON THE CAST. Second, that this complete jackwagon (also up front) absolutely living for “Totally Fucked” was rocking around in her seat and literally fist-pumping the air throughout the number. Look, I GET that it’s a forking banger and you’re definitely feeling it, but you’re still at the theatre and not a mosh pit. It was hilarious though how hard she committed to the part — this production has the kids silently staring at the audience at the end of the song RIGHT up close to us for a long time, powerfully implying ‘what the fuck have you done to us, we actually despise you, you ruined everything, you stupid bitch’, and this girl STILL KEPT FIST-PUMPING. IN AN EXTENDED AND HEAVY AND GROWING HEAVIER BY THE SECOND MOMENT OF SILENCE. Now that’s commitment to being a bellend, I’ll give her that.
INFO
Show is 2 1/2 hours.
The space only has one exit and there is no way to the House Right side of the rows (which have no center aisle btw, a nightmare) around the back, so if you are sitting in the right half of seats, you have to go through the front row and often step onto the first step of the stage, which, well, blows.
The Almeida needs a second set of toilets. Be ready for QUEUES, and the men’s was longer!!
Thanks for the water dispensers on the bar, loves it.
