“Once: The Musical” Is Still A Triumph Away From Broadway

It’s Theatre Thursday! I saw “Spongebob” on Broadway and we’re gonna talk about it! It closes September 16.
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​He’s says he’s ‘not a simple sponge’…but he kind of is. And although fans of this season’s new Broadway musical “Spongebob Squarepants” will say that people of all ages can enjoy the show (and that’s true, they will), it was created for kids and that’s who it’s geared towards and that’s who I am and that’s who I care about. Okay not the last two bits I got carried away. “Spongebob” the musical is a lot of fun, and a technical marvel, but it’s a bit of a letdown for adults. And considering adults have to accompany the screaming children (yes they did scream) to the theatre and buy at least two tickets, the profit-making model for this show doesn’t really work. Unlike Disney shows from the past, the adults aren’t given equal consideration here, and so few adults will be present without children (I think my sister-in-law and I were the only unaccompanied adults when we saw it). And while it’s very sad news, I’m not surprised that the show just announced that it will be closing in September, because it takes a lot of rich people to decide to spend $100+ on taking their kids to see this when they’ve been watching the TV show for free for years. 

​But even so, if you are able to see the show before it closes in two months, you should check it out. I never watched the TV show and only had a passing familiarity with what Bob Esponja (what the poster for the movie said in Spain and so what my husbo and I call Spongebob 100% of the time for the past 3 years) and his friend the pink starfish looked like before I sat in the uppermost balcony at the Palace Theatre (that $30 rush ticket though) amid hundreds of screaming, eating, texting children (and their worse-behaved parents) for this show. I was prepared for this kind of audience, and even so, given the multitude of surprisingly positive reviews and the insanely strong fan base, I was prepared to love it. I had a good time, but I didn’t love it.
 
This musical tells the story of this simple sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS okay that part I knew before too who DOESN’T know the theme song and then it goes like abhorrent and boorish and porous is he!!) in a cute little under the sea town called Bikini Bottom and he has other species friends and bosses and frenemies and it’s all cute. BUT THEN, they get news that a nearby volcano is going to erupt and destroy their town! Oh noes. Almost everyone agrees that they should leave town (I mean, right?) before doomsday. The villains, Plankton and his robot (?) wife, offer that they should put all town residents in an escape pod to get to their next home, and everyone is like wow great idea but Plankton and sea-Janet really just want everyone in one confined space so they can hypnotize them and convince them to eat at their failing restaurant instead of at the very popular Krusty Krabs, where Spongebob works as a fry cook. (How do they fry under water.) Spongebob is the only one who doesn’t want to flee the coming horror, because he simple. He thinks they should fight for their home, and so he sets off on a mission to save the town in the two days he has before the predicted eruption. Meanwhile, the rest of the town plans a concert to raise money to pay for the escape pod.
 
Okay fine, a little silly but a decent story choice for a Spongebob musical! But guess what, it’s also quite political and timely. While Bob Esponja is like hmm how do I stop a volcano, maybe with French fries???, the rest of the town is looking for someone to blame for everything, as most people do when something goes wrong (except unlike in real life, the people looking to blame an innocent person aren’t also the ones responsible). So the townsfolk decide to blame Sandy Cheeks, the smart adorable FEMALE squirrel, all things that powerful people despise, for the impending destruction. Of course, blame the smart woman! They choose her because she’s a land mammal, and so it’s easy to turn the town against her with chants of how she doesn’t belong there. I KNOW, it’s pretty darn topical. Also, Sandy is played by Lilli Cooper (the great), who is black, so it’s really poignant to show her being ostracized so the mostly white kids (hopefully) get the connection and see that that’s bad. Even though the town is trying to drive Sandy out, Spongebob convinces her to help him save the day, since Sandy is a brilliant scientist (and the real hero of the show). She creates a device that when dropped into the mouth of the volcano will turn the lava flow into harmless bubbles and I am here for that kind of scientific discovery, Elon. Spongebob volunteers to be the sad sack who has to drop the machine into the volcano, so a lot of the second act is him climbing the volcano/the little moving set piece. Obviously, he makes it to the top and saves the day and the town, and the town lauds him and forgives Sandy for being black but literally gives her nothing else, no acclaim for being the actual savior of everything and so I was a little salty and kind of wish that the town actually was destroyed because fuck that, this badass girl is a squirrel who is a scientist and she’s merely ALLOWED TO KEEP LIVING IN THE TOWN WHILE THE STUPID WHITE MAN FRY COOK IS CONSIDERED THE HERO OF IT ALL? please. Anyway that’s just my take on it, because of course Bob was going to be the hero in the show named after him, but how good would it have been to turn the tables on him and be like ‘thanks for doing the manual labor portion of the job now let’s have a parade for this amazing black girl!’ but no. So that’s the plot and it’s cute but it gets a little long considering it’s a kids show. The second act needed to be shorter.
 
So, full truth here. The best reviewed thing about this show, besides its set design, is ts leading spongeman, Ethan Slater, in a miraculous Broadway debut that has him singing, dancing, and pretty much jumping up and down and all around like a dynamo/bouncing ball/firework/sponge for hours and hours and keeping those energy levels up and keeping the rest of his cast energized and engaged and just being adorable and amazing and Tony-worthy, so everyone said. He was 98% of the reason I saw the show, the other 2% being for the set and the 12 Tony nominations it received. But apparently, those energy levels are real hard to keep up for 8 shows a week for months on end, because starting in about May, Ethan low-key started taking off at least one performance a week. And I fully understand why, and I appreciate that anyone doing this role full time would have to do that to stay alive because it requires absolute insane physicality from its star. But they should have set a defined performance and a defined alternate, as they do for most stars doing 7 of 8 shows. The ‘random’ performance he took off that week was my performance. Like, fuck. Curtis Holbrook, the understudy, did a marvelous job and I had zero complaints, but I didn’t get to see the performance that everyone was raving about. I can’t imagine what Ethan could do differently, though, to make people think he was robbed of a Tony. It’s a great, meaty, exhausting role, but it’s no great feat of acting.
 
And the cast is great all-around, really, with nice performances from Cooper and Skinner and a standout one from tap-dancing phenomenon Gavin Lee, as Squidward. He wears a costume that gives him four legs, and he brings the house down with a long extravagant tap number. It’s the best part of the show, rightly so given that he’s the one true vet up there. The tap dance alone that he does is difficult and impressive enough, but the fact that he’s doing it with four legs – and making it seem effortless – is astounding. There’s also a standout vocal performance from Jai’len Christine Li Josey, an 18-year-old girl who won the 2014 Jimmy Awards, kind of the Tonys for high school musical theatre performers. Her voice is the kind that’s a gift from the gods. She’s absolutely insane. She wasn’t the most natural actor, but with that voice I’m sure she will have a strong career, one that I hope includes “Seasons of Love” soloist among other bigger parts.
 
The biggest news surrounding this production is what I consider one of its biggest flaws: that its score was compiled by a seemingly endless list of super famous musicians, including Sara Bareilles, David Bowie (RIP hope this isn’t the last thing he did), John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Steven Tyler, Cyndi Lauper, I mean it’s very ridiculous that this is a list of composers for one Broadway show. Each musician wrote one song in the show, and while it’s fun to be like ‘Oh this song was written by…THE RAPPER T.I.???? and this one by…Panic! At the Disco?????’, that kind of set up does not make for a cohesive musical. It makes for a disjointed one, with no real common threads that a musical needs to succeed as a whole and not just be a concert set against a story. Fun fact: For a long time my dad thought it was Panic! At the Drive-in because Sirius radio only showed the band’s name up to D and he assumed it stood for drive-in. The best songs by far were “Bikini Bottom Day”, by Jonathan Coulton, and Bareilles’ pirate song, which had nothing to do with the plot and was used as a silly intermission ender.
 
I think if the score was written by one great composing team, the musical would have been better and lasted longer, because every visual aspect of the production is superb. David Zinn’s set design is a marvel, and he rightly won the Tony for it. He uses everyday items – kind of like what you would (too easily) find floating in the ocean as garbage – to create this seascape of underwater magic that still feels familiar. His best work is the enormous Rube Goldberg contraptions on the sides of the stage that come into play at specific moments, huge devices that use little balls to spin wheels to drop levers to push handles &c &c to spit beach balls at the cast or something like that. It was the best.
 
The amazing visual treats also include Christopher Gattelli’s fun and inspired choreography, with magical moments like when the cast holds yellow sponges in the dark to e.g. make Bob’s flying cape in “Simple Sponge”. That number was actually gorgeous. And everything is handled masterfully by Tina Landau’s direction. Bringing this kind of show to life is difficult, and she deserves all the acclaim, like Sandy, for bringing it all together. Even the costumes were phenomenal, using regular clothes for the most part to evoke the familiar characters. Spongebob doesn’t wear a big suit like he’s just outside the theatre door hounding tourists in Times Square. He just wears a yellow shirt and red tie and plaid pants – and it works brilliantly. Patrick the starfish (a lovable Danny Skinner) wears an oversize pink tee shirt paired with green shorts in another so-simple-it’s-brilliant technique.
 
So the visuals are great. But it’s the other senses that get attacked. It’s the loudest musical ever. The fact that they were nominated for a Sound Design Tony is 100% due to the fun special effects produced live by the man (sorry can’t find your name) in the first balcony box with a keyboard equipped with the craziest sounds, like bubbles and squeaks and other noises of all sorts that aren’t British foods. That’s all done very well and amusingly but it gets to be a little too much. But who can even pay attention to them when the theatre is full of ear-damaging speakers that make everything so loud it would be bad even with earplugs? It was painful at times. And I’ve heard from people who sat in different sections that they could barely hear it! What is going on with the sound in this theatre? It sounds like a g-d mess. Is it so loud in most places to keep children’s attention? Maybe? but damaging everyone’s eardrums seems like not the right solution. And if kids are going to lose focus, having everything be super loud isn’t going to help. The rock concert that Squidward stages showed this more than ever, because a rock band plays and it’s just awfully loud and I wanted to scream get off my lawn.
 
I mean I’m starting to get too deep into the ranty ravey portion of my theatre discussions, and we don’t need to do that. “Spongebob” was a fun confection of a Broadway show, but I wish that they paid more attention to making it a fully realized show that adults would enjoy and not just kids, and that includes paying more attention to the crux of a musical – the score. As it is, it’s cheerful and fun and it’s a helluva lot better than anyone predicted when they first announced a Spongebob musical, but I wish it was truly great. 
 
INFORMATION
If you go, turn off your phone and don’t bring loud food and drinks in or treat it like you’re at a party, because you’re not a monster. But don’t expect anyone else to follow your lead. 

​Lucas Hnath was just your ordinary boy, spending his days writing about what happened to his favorite characters from various fiction universes after the original work ended. He started with the many Star Trek series, as most writers of fan fiction do, daydreaming scenarios that stayed true to the established canon but existed wholly outside of it. Yet the boy quickly felt that this focus on modern works was stifling his creativity. He tried his hand at the other popular fandoms, from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, before realizing that his abilities would best be exercised by going back in time. “Hmm,” he thought, twirling his pen that was also a clock, “I wonder if anyone has fanficked up some old plays before.” He looked through the standards, Shaw, O’Neill, Joyce, Miller, before landing on the one that he felt a natural connection with, the Norwegian ‘father of realism’ Henrik Ibsen. Lucas felt particularly drawn to his famous early feminist play “A Doll’s House”, in which a housewife casts aside the suffocating trappings of her anti-feminist 19th century society. “I wonder what happened next,” Lucas thought, and busily got to work. And that’s how writing fanfic became the coolest way to get a play on Broadway.  

​Okay, I’m just joking about all that, but the critically acclaimed new play “A Doll’s House, Part 2” really is straight up fanfic and I loooooveeee it for that. Like what if that amazing story where Jess and Dean heal each other’s Rory-inflicted wounds by getting together themselves that I found on the Gilmore Girls subreddit was made into its own TV show, that’s kind of what is happening here. But it’s so much better because it’s on Broadway, and I jest but Hnath (I am fully saying the H and it sounds like I’m sneezing I don’t know if that’s right) did a fine job imagining what has become of Nora, the classic dramatic protagonist who first told housewives they didn’t need to be housewives, and Torvald, the husband who inspired a century of names proving that some parents hate their children.
 
It’s a good thing Ibsen has been dead for 111 years (I looked it up) because fanfic can infringe on an author’s copyright. But instead of getting sued, Hnath is getting rightfully lauded for his creative, engaging new play. Even if Ibsen were alive, I think he would have liked it. It takes place 15 years after the original work ends, when Nora famously decides she can no longer stand conforming to the strict rules for her gender and being treated like a doll so she leaves her husband and three children with a slam of the door. I saw Part 2 last week with my brother, who did not know the original work, while I’ve seen the original performed a bunch of times. And as soon as brother got over the excitement of seeing Frances McDormand and Joel Coen sitting across the way from us (just kidding he didn’t), he was fine, because honestly what I explained about the original plot in the previous sentence is all you need to know going in. I mean I don’t actually remember much else anyway so as long as you know ‘old timey gender roles, fed up wife, left her husband and children at the end,’ you’re good.
 
After that powerful ending of the original, what would bring Nora back to her family? How long would it take before she returned? As Part 2 opens, we repeatedly get the answer to the latter question – “Fifteen years!” the maid Anne Marie (Jayne Houdyshell, HILARIOUS all caps necessary) repeatedly shouts! “Fifteen years,” Nora (Laurie Metcalf) repeatedly repeats. The answer to the former question takes a little more prodding, as first Nora wants Anne Marie to gush over how good she looks, in her super expensive-looking gown and her all not-being-dead state, which is a surprise as the family, and the town, it turns out, believed she died because what woman could take care of herself?! Metcalf, who gave one of the best theatrical performances I ever saw in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” several years back, is completely different here, loud and confident but with a certain unnaturalness in her tone and behavior that makes you a little uncomfortable, suggesting that Nora is not as comfortable and contented as she wants everyone to think. The subtle uneasiness could easily be ignored by audience members who want to believe that everything worked out for Nora, and could easily be seized upon for those who want her to have suffered. But Nora is very pleased with how her life turned out, because she became an author of famous books for women – under a pen name of course, lest she be ruined – criticizing the sexism of society and condemning the preposterousness (preposterity? preposterity! change approved!) of marriage. Her books have made a huge splash, garnering rabid fans and intense opposition, as enemies of her/fans of traditional society want to unmask the unknown author and destroy her to set an example.
 
Trying to prevent such destruction is what brings Nora back to this house. She needs a divorce from Torvald – they never got divorced in the 15 years! FIFTEEN YEARS! Anne Marie, who raised Nora and then raised Nora’s kids instead of her own, is incensed that after all this time (FIFTEEN YEARS!) Nora is only returning for selfish reasons, Nora who never actually said goodbye to the loyal Anne Marie. Houdyshell, always good, manages to make the audience absolutely fall over themselves laughing in the first part of the show, which is just Anne Marie and Nora laying out the facts. It’s a good way to easy into the serious dialogue to come, the debate over right and wrong and decency and strength that becomes more muddled the more you say.  
 
So some man in an office somewhere found out a) that Nora is the author of these books and b) that Torvald never divorced her, and he is threatening to expose her and send her to jail. There are several important period-sensitive issues happening here: A woman could only divorce her husband if she proved, basically, that he was a POS, a cheat or some such. But a man could divorce his wife for any reason. So clearly it would be easier for all if Torvald went along and signed the paper and that was that. If he refused and Nora chose to do it herself, she would need to ruin Torvald’s reputation. And to ruin a man again who didn’t really do anything wrong, at least according to society and everything he knew, would be very unfair. As for why the reveal of Nora as the books’ author would be criminal – she had been acting as an unmarried woman, conducting business and signing contracts as only an unmarried woman could back then. If it turned out that she had signed contracts and entered into deals without the consent of her husband and without him taking the lead on the business dealings, it would be a crime. I knowww so wrong.
 
The plot doesn’t really matter – the play is about Nora reconciling her decision to save herself with how it affected the people in her life. But the legal issues she faces provide an effective template for how these discussions progress. Either way it goes, there are no winners, and the decisions made – which we don’t see; don’t think that this wraps up their story all tidily and dumb – will continue to break this family. And they will continue to question whether Nora was justified in leaving and living her own life. No matter which side you’re on, there’s no right answer to what she should have done because, as we witness through the three conversations, it’s too complicated when humans are involved.
 
Once you laugh enough with Anne Marie, the door opens again, and it’s Torvald, played by a somber, unsmiling Chris Cooper, whose entrance immediately changes the mood from a comedy to a drama. His solemnity contrasts with Nora’s crass, almost boorish new manner that gives her the freedom to now sit with her legs falling open, to lie about on the floor in her skirts just because she can. Nora explains her situation to Torvald as if it’s the simplest matter in the world with a clear and straightforward solution. But Chris reminds you of the gravity of the situation, even just physically with how heavy his carriage seems. First of all, Torvald’s like, you just straight up left me and our children, never sent a letter or anything, we thought you died and OH YEAH, we told everyone you did, and you ruined me, and now you want more from me? Then he gets to the heart of the matter, which is that regardless of whether he complies with her or not, they still lose and continue to destroy each other. If he refuses to divorce Nora, she will either destroy him publicly to get the divorce or she will go to jail and be ruined herself. If he refuses and she does choose to try for the divorce, then everyone in town will find out that Nora is actually not dead and that Torvald lied about her dying, and so he’d probably lose his job and be ruined. On the other hand, it’s kind of the same hand because if he does divorce her, there would be a public document proving that Nora is still alive, so everyone would again find out that Torvald lied about his wife dying and he would be shunned and probably lose his job and be ruined. No matter how badly we want to commend Nora for trying to live her best life, her actions harmed Torvald and continue to harm him after all this time. Whether he was a bad husband or not, the punishment still seems to outweigh the crime, and Chris’s performance makes you believe that the self-empowerment behind Nora’s choice does not excuse its ramifications.
 
The uneasiness this dilemma creates in the audience does not go away, because we don’t find out what Torvald decides to do. It would be hard to believe, however, that he decides to give Nora what she wants. If he’s ruined either way, there’s no way he would make it easier for the woman who devastated him. But it just seems so unfair all around. It’ll make you wonder whether Nora should have just stayed, but then you know she would have suffered her whole life in a claustrophobic role. And you feel bad for Torvald, especially since he wasn’t really a bad man.
 
The complicated nature of it all continues as Chris leaves and Condola Rashad, brilliant, enters. (BTW, the show is structured generally in three bits – Nora’s conversations with Anne Marie, Torvald, and then Emmy, her daughter. Chris Cooper generally gets the same amount of time as the others, yet he is considered and nominated as Leading Actor in a Play. Erm.) Rashad plays Emmy, one of Nora’s three children that she left behind, now all grown up. It is hard to get over how awesome it is that Rashad, a black woman, is playing the daughter of two white people. There’s no contextual reason, no scandal, just that Rashad is a fantastic actress who deserved to be cast and, even though the character of Emmy would be white in the play’s society, it frankly doesn’t matter who is playing her onstage. Like Thomas Jefferson around the corner. It’s a play, and the audience can deal with it, so more productions should stop using the excuse of historical accuracy or whatever for being so damn white. We’re suspending belief anyway that Laurie doesn’t have a sister named Roseanne; we’re fine doing more. Emmy is a smart young woman with no apparent emotional connection to her mother. She did abandon her as a very young child, after all, and Emmy barely remembers her. Since Nora was okay with leaving her and her two sons in the first place, she doesn’t seem to mind that Emmy treats her coolly. But she does mind that Emmy is the exact opposite of the type of woman Nora is trying to empower. Growing up with no semblance of traditional domestic stability, Emmy yearns to marry and fulfill her social duty as an obedient wife, with the house and the kids and the banker husband (actually, her betrothed even works at Torvald’s bank). Naturally, this horrifies Nora, who spends most of the play railing against marriage (sometimes to the applause of the audience, sometimes to nervous laughter, sometimes to shocked silence when she goes too far). But the poised and intelligent Emmy seems almost more empowered and self-assured than Nora, who feels the need to throw her empowerment in everyone’s face. Emmy knows she has the right to a choice, and that her legitimate preference for the traditional option is still a valid choice. Despite her desire to stay in the place that restrictive society wants her to stay in, Emmy exhibits more clarity and self-awareness than her mother, especially when she tells her “Don’t make my wants about your wants.”
 
Nora thought she’d have an easy time convincing Emmy to convince Torvald to give into her demands, but Emmy swiftly turns the tables and asks Nora to let Torvald be, having done enough to him already. And Emmy doesn’t want the inevitable ruin to affect her happiness, as the scandal surrounding a faked death would probably stop her wedding. Nora, who stormed in at the beginning with conviction about what she needed to accomplish in this visit, is left confused about what to do. She doesn’t want to ruin her daughter’s chance at happiness, despite her opposition to its form. And she likely realizes how Torvald has suffered enough because of her. It’s completely unclear whether she would do what it takes to let her family live happily – for her to let the bad man expose her true identity and probably ruin her – but you get the sense that she at least can’t now do what it takes to actively ruin them. I almost just wrote that it’s literally between a rock and a hard place. It is not but it is very much figuratively that.
 
Not much really happens in the play’s swift 90 minutes, but these discussions are fascinating. And even though it’s not a perfect show by far, I just love the concept, to take a classic work and think about what happened next. It leaves you haunted by the questions of what’s right and wrong and whether choosing oneself is borne of selfishness or self-love. The situation is entirely unwinnable and really unpleasant to contemplate. Luckily, it’s just fan fiction, so you can continue believing that everyone lived happy lives after Nora first slammed the door. But it’s not as interesting that way.
 
THEATRE INFO
No intermission means no super long bathroom lines, which is wonderful. It’s quite easy to get rush tickets to this show, but that might change after the Tony Awards since this is up for eight of them. And all four actors are nominated, which is amazing. 
 
Everyone came out of stage door (there are only four actors after all) and signed. Jayne and Condola moved off very quickly, probably thinking that everyone was waiting just for the bigger stars. But Condola came back when someone asked her to (not me I swear) and was super excited and friendly.
 
Walking towards the subway I saw Art from Orphan Black and screamed. The end.