"Challenge Accepted": Vegan Chocolate Rugelach (Ohh Yeahhh)by Randi / November 5, 2013
Steve Kazee, from the Original Broadway Cast
Many new project announcements for Broadway shows make me raise my eyebrows in doubt or surprise. No project has ever made me angry, expect when I heard that “Once”, one of my favorite movies about the music of one of my favorite bands, was getting the musical treatment. I felt personal attachment and ownership over the material, as I often do, but this time I had no hope that a stage show could capture the personal feel and beauty of the movie. I of course was wrong, because Once: The Musical is so incredibly lovely and pure. Some aspects are improved in the stage show, and the various added characters round out a superb experience of the power of beautiful music.
I was lucky to see the original production on Broadway, with Tony-winner Steve Kazee and (the Mother on “HIMYM”) Cristin Milioti. Within a few minutes, I felt with my entire being that this was a magical experience. I’m so relieved that the first national tour, which recently played Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, is equally enthralling. If you have the chance to catch the tour, go see it. Even though the space is huge, the perfectly directed show still achieves the required level of intimacy. And the wonderful tour cast fully sells every aspect of the difficult show.
I was lucky to see the original production on Broadway, with Tony-winner Steve Kazee and (the Mother on “HIMYM”) Cristin Milioti. Within a few minutes, I felt with my entire being that this was a magical experience. I’m so relieved that the first national tour, which recently played Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, is equally enthralling. If you have the chance to catch the tour, go see it. Even though the space is huge, the perfectly directed show still achieves the required level of intimacy. And the wonderful tour cast fully sells every aspect of the difficult show.
Stuart Ward, ‘Guy’ on the national tour
I say it’s a difficult show because we’ve all come to expect everything in this world, from art to politics to personal relationships, to be covered with a protective layer of cynicism, or bitterness, or at least some of kind of edge. “Once” has absolutely no edge. It has no artifice. It is a simple show presenting insanely gorgeous music for its own sake, and showing how the music affects people it touches. It’s a bold and brave move to not couch its message in anything at all but instead to nakedly display it, leaving it vulnerable to attacks of being too twee. I think a lot of the people who think the show twee or corny feel uncomfortable in dealing with such pure emotion straight on, because we’re rarely asked to do that.
The show takes place in Dublin, mainly in a bar where the area musicians meet to share their music. (Every cast member plays an instrument; they are the orchestra.) One of the best parts is that, as on Broadway, the bar set features an actual working bar, and audience members can go on stage and buy a drink before the show and during intermission. During the pre-show section, the entire cast is onstage, playing their music and encouraging each other to join in. It’s a fantastic way to highlight the talent of the cast members who don’t get solos during the actual show. This set up also allows for one of the most magical ways to open a show I’ve ever seen: As the music continues and the audience members slowly get ushered off the stage, Guy, our unnamed hero, starts playing his first song. The lights fully dim during this song, “Leave”, one of Glen Hansard’s many powerful, heart-breaking songs, and before you know it the show has officially started. It’s pretty fantastic (as long as the people around you know to shut up even though the lights are on…seriously people.)
Girl, our Czech heroine who is even more honest and open than the show, hears Guy’s song and knows that he has something special. She pushes him to keep playing even though his broken heart wants him to quit, and her faith in him brings new depth to his music. It’s one of the most romantic relationships ever, with a couple that doesn’t end up together or ever even kiss. It’s all about the music. And it’s amazing.
The Girl is a really complex role. She has to be so optimistic that she verges on chipper, and so honest and open that it veers into cartoony. The actress playing her has to keep her from getting too cartoony while also showing her maturity and intelligence. Cristin Milioti did this perfectly, somehow. The Girl on tour does a respectable job. Some of her early lines (the funniest ones) in Act I got a little hammy, but in the more serious Act II scenes, she was great. Although it’s still a bit strange to hear the unnamed Guy sing a lot of the songs, instead of the wondrous Glen Hansard, the tour’s Guy was very likable and demonstrated emotion well. However, a lot of his lyrics were swallowed. Surprisingly, one of my favorite characters on tour was Andrej, one of Girl’s roommates, whom I don’t even remember from Broadway. He has few lines and a tiny substory of about 30 seconds, but it was heartbreaking on tour. It shows what a good actor can do with very little.
My absolute favorite part of the stage show is funnily enough my least favorite part of the movie. The song “Gold”, by the Irish band Interference is sung in the movie during a ‘Sing for your supper’ kind of dinner party. In the show, Guy sings it at an open mic night at the bar, to a very cynical crowd (when he says “This is a song…that I wrote” everyone groans; it’s pretty great). But soon, every single person at the bar picks up an instrument and joins in, completely moved by his music and almost without realizing it. Here’s the cast performing it at the Tony Awards. The stomp is my favorite part of the entire show, seriously. (They changed the intro for the Tonys, so you’ll have to see the show for the hilarious lines.)
Girl, our Czech heroine who is even more honest and open than the show, hears Guy’s song and knows that he has something special. She pushes him to keep playing even though his broken heart wants him to quit, and her faith in him brings new depth to his music. It’s one of the most romantic relationships ever, with a couple that doesn’t end up together or ever even kiss. It’s all about the music. And it’s amazing.
The Girl is a really complex role. She has to be so optimistic that she verges on chipper, and so honest and open that it veers into cartoony. The actress playing her has to keep her from getting too cartoony while also showing her maturity and intelligence. Cristin Milioti did this perfectly, somehow. The Girl on tour does a respectable job. Some of her early lines (the funniest ones) in Act I got a little hammy, but in the more serious Act II scenes, she was great. Although it’s still a bit strange to hear the unnamed Guy sing a lot of the songs, instead of the wondrous Glen Hansard, the tour’s Guy was very likable and demonstrated emotion well. However, a lot of his lyrics were swallowed. Surprisingly, one of my favorite characters on tour was Andrej, one of Girl’s roommates, whom I don’t even remember from Broadway. He has few lines and a tiny substory of about 30 seconds, but it was heartbreaking on tour. It shows what a good actor can do with very little.
My absolute favorite part of the stage show is funnily enough my least favorite part of the movie. The song “Gold”, by the Irish band Interference is sung in the movie during a ‘Sing for your supper’ kind of dinner party. In the show, Guy sings it at an open mic night at the bar, to a very cynical crowd (when he says “This is a song…that I wrote” everyone groans; it’s pretty great). But soon, every single person at the bar picks up an instrument and joins in, completely moved by his music and almost without realizing it. Here’s the cast performing it at the Tony Awards. The stomp is my favorite part of the entire show, seriously. (They changed the intro for the Tonys, so you’ll have to see the show for the hilarious lines.)
I’m glad to report that the choreography is the pretty similar on the tour. However, in other parts of the show, the choppy, modern choreography is a little less “Spring Awakening” and a little more “Hail Hitler”, with strange jerky arm movements and awkward steps. It’s interesting on the whole, how the movements reflect the characters’ awkward and new emotions, but sometimes it’s just too awkward.
Overall, “Once” is really a magical show. There are a few new songs that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova wrote for the show, like the wonderfully sad but soothing “Sleeping”, but they replace some favorites like “Lies”, “All The Way Down”, and “Once”. But the choices are smart, and the book, though different from the movie, has all the necessary charm and intelligence to successfully translate this small but powerful story to the stage. I’m so happy to have been wrong about this show.
Overall, “Once” is really a magical show. There are a few new songs that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova wrote for the show, like the wonderfully sad but soothing “Sleeping”, but they replace some favorites like “Lies”, “All The Way Down”, and “Once”. But the choices are smart, and the book, though different from the movie, has all the necessary charm and intelligence to successfully translate this small but powerful story to the stage. I’m so happy to have been wrong about this show.
Related Posts
Jukebox Musical “& Juliet” Tailor Made for London’s Tipsy Millennials
I wanted to say something about how & Juliet may be the ‘jukebox musical to end all jukebox musicals’, but that’s incredibly mistaken considering how instantly beloved it is and how it is guaranteed to usher in a whole new wave of cringey shows using songs that make the audience repeatedly shout “I LOVE THIS SONG!” and sing along. & Juliet takes the clichéd formulation of “what if Romeo & Juliet ended differentlyyyuhhh” (that’s my best Lola Skumpy voice) and tells what would have happened if Juliet took her two besties (that she doesn’t seem to know anything about) and the HOTTEST turn-of-the-century (that’s this current century, dear) chart toppers on a little spree and just belted her face off in the closest thing to a huge arena pop concert that a musical has ever been.
& Juliet is hundo p a musical for millennials – and unlike when baby boomers say millennials and actually mean Gen Z (they hate YOOTS), I actually mean millennials because the audience has to be READY to relive the HEYDAY of boy bands and Britney Spears. This musical feeds on the slightly tipsy 30-year-old remembering what it was like when you’d be at a middle school dance and Britney’s “Overprotected” would come on and you’d be like YASSSSS and don’t even get me STARTED on “I Want it That Way” and “It’s Gonna Be Me”, two pillars of the boy band takeover courtesy of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC that of course are PIVOTAL to this show’s story.
The surprising part is, it’s a lot more fun that it ought to be. & Juliet, with a book by David West Read and music by every pop sensation you’d expect in a show like this (but mostly Britney Spears; it could really be called the Britney Spears musical because it’s like half her catalogue), forces the biggest pop hits of the late ‘90s/early 2000s (for the most part) to tell the story of Juliet if she was like I’m not killing myself just because this boy I’ve known for 4 days did it first; I’ma flee to France and dance and party and start fresh/get immediately engaged to another boy I barely know. Everything about this show is simultaneously fun and beyond cringe-worthy, a mixture that meant my eyes didn’t know what to do between all the rolling and the widening and the smiling. The framing device has Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife (and yes, of COURSE there are cringey jokes about how that’s her real name and she’s not the only one HAR HAR, guys this is England everyone knows that’s his wife’s name), confront her husband about the depressing and not exactly empowering ending to his new play. She offers to help rewrite the ending and the couple bicker…by singing “I Want it That Way” to each other. Literally, Will is like “but I want it that way” and Anne is like “tell me why?” and then all the blondes go AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HEARTACHE and I felt my stomach eat itself because a groan wasn’t enough and yet I was smiling???
So Will and Anne are like okay well let’s see what it looks like with the new material and we see Juliet (Miriam-Teak Lee) pull a Sofia from The Color Purple when she sees the dead Romeo and go ‘hellllll noooooo’ and get up and keep living her life instead of ending it at 14 (the age issue provides some hilarious material). She flees to Paris to PARTY, bringing along her gender-queer friend May (which is great for representation but having them sing “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” may have been the most forced part uhh (although Arun Blair-Mangat was like, jfc it sounded like they were playing a recording that’s how flawless)) and of course…her friend…Anne…Anne Hathaway, who wants to be in the play?? It’s awkward storytelling but they wanted the supremely talented Cassidy Janson to sang throughout the show so what are you gonna do (although the suuuuper delaaaaayed final lines of Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is” (yes that is in here too), done so she can show off even more, are way toooo over the top). Between her and Lee it is the belt-your-face-off competition of the year in there. Impressive performances abound, for sure (though I worry for Lee’s vocal health doing this show long-term), but when it’s this much belting, it’s like belted song after belted song and it’s supposed to impress you with all their belting but after all this belting you’re just like ‘yes this is still this show.’ The Act II power ballads in any of the many 11 o’clock moments don’t have as much dramatic heft because it’s just more at the same level of volume and intensity.
But what am I talking about, they don’t really care about dramatic effect and storytelling, this is ABOUT FUN. And everyone else is having a g-d ball at this show. It doesn’t matter that the side plot about Juliet’s nurse and her lover (I was like that actor kind of looks like David Bedella but there’s no way; guess what, it’s him) falls flat because they are supposed to be the comedic effect but the entire SHOW is comedic effect so that kind of thing doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter that the unnecessary marriage drama between Anne and Will is so ill-fitting for a show like this – you can’t all of a sudden have a woman cry over her crumbling marriage when the show is a ROMP of BOY BAND HITS. It doesn’t matter that everyone is miked to within an inch of their lives and it’s virtually a pop concert with a forced story that makes you groan louder than you thought humanly possible, because it’s fun. Everyone is enjoying themselves; this is one of those shows that’s beyond critique.
My favorite part was when they represented Paris by parading little landmarks across the stage, like the Eiffel Tower and then…and then the Moulin Rouge windmill, reminding me with a shudder that we haven’t seen the last of these forced pop-score storytelling shows this YEAR. I can’t wait to see if that behemoth of a show can top this one, either in terms of enjoyability or how many times I groan.
INFORMATION
& Juliet is playing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, probably forever. Despite being an ENORMOUS theatre, there aren’t any bad seats. I was in the back of the circle (supes cheap) and it was a great view. There’s a good ladies bathroom in the circle (like literally…inside the theatre) but the rest of the bathrooms are old and gross and small.
If you buy directly from the theatre, they charge an extra £1.50 to pick up ticket at the box office, which should be THE DEFAULT option. Such bullshirt. You can print at home for free. BULLSHIRT.
Barber Shop Chronicles at the Roundhouse: Uneven but Enjoyable
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Barber Shop Chronicles, at London’s Roundhouse theatre until August 24.
Last weekend, we trekked up to Camden to see the latest production of Barber Shop Chronicles (hard for me to remember that it is three words but one is not ‘the’), Inua Ellams 2017 play about the important role barbershops play in black male communities the world over. It makes sense, giving this location the theatrical treatment, considering that barbershops in certain neighborhoods can play the role of community center, home, church, public square, political stage, and more. The entertainment factor of the wide-ranging conversations is built-in; the challenge is putting these conversations together into a cohesive work, which Barber Shop struggles with. Making quick stops in London’s Peckham neighborhood and locations all over Africa, all on the same day, this cheery ensemble piece gives glimpses of what these community centers share despite their distance.
It sounds like a slam-dunk idea, and for most of the audience it was. The actors are entertaining and energetic, and the set design is wonderful – there’s a wire globe that (patchily) lights up with the action’s current location as it spins, and all the international hair salon ads hanging from the ceiling are also lit depending on which city we’re currently in. And, great for audience members with shorter attention spans, the fast pace from location to location keeps the material from getting bogged down. But, that rapid anecdotes-only pace also keeps it from developing into something more meaningful, a story you can sink into. And it would be one thing if the anecdotal set-up were trusted, but the creators tried that for the first half and then tried to dramatize the non-story for the second half, resulting in an inconsistent outcome.
That first half, where we dropped in on Peckham, Lagos, Accra, and more to briefly listen to what the men were discussing today, showcased brief anecdotes and easy jokes – exclamations, silly voices, the stuff that audiences eat up. Although they did cleverly establish that this was all happening on the same day, by having everyone discuss a big football match, the focus was clearly more on joking around. And the jokes felt cheap, if not offensive. I mean, clearly this show wasn’t written for me and I’m okay with that, but I’m not okay with jokes about every other group of people that felt more mean-spirited than not. One of the longer (still not long, but longer) bits in this first half has a guy tell the others about his friend with an autistic child who tends to make scenes in public, and how they were told to beat the autism out of her – and everyone, onstage and off, erupts into insane laughter. Is…is that funny? There are also lots of macho jokes about gay men and wearing down women who reject you, which felt very troubling. Again, I’m not the target demographic here, but I don’t think that matters when you’re joking about these topics. And if the excuse is that this was just showing how normal men talk in these places – you know, ‘locker-room’ talk – well then that’s definitely a problem.
Soon, the cheap jokes gave way to a sort of late-stage attempt to create dedicated characters and narrative, and by that point it felt unearned. We had a young Peckham man angry at his boss because he thinks he put his dad in jail for no reason, when obviously, you could guess from a mile away the father actually committed the crime and we were going to find out about with the boy, obviously, and then he was going to forgive the boss, obviously, and we were going to all witness the emotional ‘reconciliation’ that honestly would have been emotional if the rest of the show built towards any kind of emotion, but as is, it felt out of left field and the emotion was unwarranted. There’s another cross-continental emotional bridge they try to build between another Peckham youth and a man we met in one of the African shops, but again, with no such foundation established, no emotional groundwork laid with all the time they had, it’s a last-minute bridge to nowhere, an attempt at an emotional punch that doesn’t land.
Despite all my problems with the story, or lack thereof, the show still remains a decent time, an interesting look at this crucial hub of black communities. And even when the action onstage is negative, the show itself still feels imbued with an overall sense of optimism, which is valuable. That’s definitely helped by the pre-show dance party happening with the cast and any audience members wanting to join in the fun, establishing a jovial high that’s hard to bring down, for most of the audience.
INFORMATION
Barber Shop Chronicles plays at the Roundhouse Theatre in Camden until August 24.
The show began at 8:05pm and ended at 9:55pm. There is no interval.
The ushers made a big deal pre-show of telling each and every person (hence a suuuper slow entry to the theatre) that there was no readmission during the show, and if you got up from your seat you’d be resat further back, because it’s performed in the round and you’d be a spectacle. Despite this warning, people came in super late and walked up and down the aisles right to the stage level the entire time, so, I guess do what you want. Also be prepared for people doing whatever they want regarding phone use, as in, everyone is on their phones the entire time and you just have to accept it. We knew going in to just breathe and accept all the phones and not say anything to anyone nearby, but we were surprised at the constancy of full-volume conversations. So, if you go you have to let go of any qualms about theatre etiquette.
