Final Meal of 2014: Excellent Food & Great Value at Manna, Londonby Randi / January 2, 2015
“Someone tell the story, someone sing the song. Every now and then the country goes a little wrong. Every now and then a madman’s bound to come along! Doesn’t stop the story – story’s pretty strong. Doesn’t change the song.” Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, dark, and often funny look at what drives certain people to commit atrocities, “Assassins” is an exceptional and provocative show. Its current production at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory is one of the most well-done shows I have yet seen in London. If you are a frequent reader, you may be thinking, well that doesn’t say much. However, I could say right now that I found not a single fault with it…but then you’d have little reason to keep reading, so I won’t.
These above-quoted opening lines of the show (the true opening of the story, after a crazy sort-of prologue) reflect what our main characters seek: for their story to be added to history, to become part of the main story, be sung of. To gain fame as part of history’s need to always mention them in the same breath as the great men they assassinated. And that’s what this story brilliantly tells – how Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Reagan, Ford, all these important presidents, were killed or almost killed, but by barely mentioning their names. The names that matter here are the assassins – Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, Hinckley, Fromme – as we see things from their perspectives. To make things even more twisted and frightening, this is staged in a sort of abandoned carnival, with each assassination attempt treated as a carnival game and lit-up “Hit!” or “Miss!” signs accompanying each gunshot. Like carnivals weren’t scary before.
First, the central character: “Johnny Booth was a handsome devil!” These lyrics are hella true in this production. Broadway’s Aaron Tveit is adoooorable. More importantly, he handles the vital role of John Wilkes Booth sublimely, being a charming and debonair Southerner who clearly conveys a base desire for ill-gained notoriety. Although his main action (killing Abraham Lincoln, obviously) is done early on, he hangs around to support the others, because, as the Balladeer sings early on, “Damn you, Johnny! You paved the way for other madmen to make us pay!” Booth pretty much started a trend in America, and so his presence is required throughout the show.
First, the central character: “Johnny Booth was a handsome devil!” These lyrics are hella true in this production. Broadway’s Aaron Tveit is adoooorable. More importantly, he handles the vital role of John Wilkes Booth sublimely, being a charming and debonair Southerner who clearly conveys a base desire for ill-gained notoriety. Although his main action (killing Abraham Lincoln, obviously) is done early on, he hangs around to support the others, because, as the Balladeer sings early on, “Damn you, Johnny! You paved the way for other madmen to make us pay!” Booth pretty much started a trend in America, and so his presence is required throughout the show.
Despite his inherent evil, Booth seems the most stable of all the characters, and probably is. The most unstable is also my favorite. “Look on the bright side, not on the sad side…I am going to the Lordy”, sings Charles J. Guiteau, the most weirdly likable character in this production, probably because the actor, Andy Nyman, is so damn good in this role, petrifying but kind of lovable. Guiteau was executed for killing President Garfield, after being denied the ambassadorship to France, which he had long assumed would be given him when he requested it. Some of the lyrics to his big song actually came from the poem he wrote the day of his execution and recited on the gallows as he laughed and danced, before hanging. The poem was called “I am going to the Lordy”. Sondheim turned this into the most catchy, horrifyingly optimistic song that captures Guiteau’s, well, gallows humor and clear insanity. Here, Guiteau also sings and dances on the gallows, performing a cakewalk and an ever-intensifying song before swinging from the noose in front of us. It’s so disturbing and so powerful. Also, Nyman does the best American accent by a Brit that I’ve heard so far in London theatre.
Before deciding to kill the president, Guiteau writes books that don’t sell and he convinces himself and others that he’s the future Ambassador to France. By seeing our characters’ failures and blown ambitions, you start to feel for them. You think, this poor guy couldn’t catch a break, and yes obviously needs mental healthcare that no one is going to provide. The music and the stories lead you on a path to almost commiseration, and then hopefully you snap out of it and realize how f-ed up you have to be to consider making this turn. But that’s the genius of “Assassins”, showing history from their perspectives and forcing you to recognize their humanity.
Personal failures as well as professional failures take blame for coaxing some down this path. “I am unworthy of your love” is a duet between two strangers, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Carly Bawden) and John Hinckley Jr. (Harry Morrison), the failed assassins of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, respectively. The memorable and pretty lovely song shows how some are led towards awful deeds in trying to impress others. The show’s Hinckley is an odd man who can’t find love, in the all-too-familiar sense of men like the Santa Barbara killer who get angry and frustrated when women, whom they were told their whole lives that they as men were entitled to, rebuffed them. Our society’s continued view of women as playthings and pretty things that men should have a say over is creepily reflected in this character, as he decides to kill a president in order to impress a movie star enough that she’d actually know he existed (as opposed to, say, the modern version of men killing the women who threaten their world view).
Fromme, on the other hand, tries to assassinate Ford in order to impress her lover, Charles Manson, whom she believed was Jesus reincarnated. And if Jesus wishes for you to kill the president, you do that! (No, seriously, don’t, even if it’s really Jesus.) Luckily, she and Hinckley failed. In this production, Fromme’s failure is shown as mostly due to her ridiculosity of a partner in crime, played by British favorite Catherine Tate as Sara Jane Moore. It’s a smallish role but she’s hilarious. A lot of people think Tate plays it too over the top, but I found her antics necessary to brighten up all the dark psychology of the show. (Except when she accidentally shoots her dog. Not funny. Luckily a stuffed dog was used, so sort of funny.) Her best bits include her shooting practice on a bucket of KFC, after which she eats the chicken. But nothing is funnier than when Moore and Squeaky botch their assassination attempt so freaking badly that, in their mad rush to complete it in a crazy moving crowd, they are unable to reload and instead throw bullets at Ford while shouting ‘Bang!’ Amaaaazing.
The real brilliance of the show is demonstrating how a person’s disappointment in living a small life can lead to such a path, just to make some kind of name for himself. And we know this so well. Mental instability of all sorts leads many to commit mass atrocities because, as we know, our media will make perpetrators famous. Whenever the awful story of a school shooting or of President Lincoln’s final days is told, so too will the name of the murderers, or of Booth.
No one explains this better than Booth himself, who uses it as a selling point when trying to persuade our narrator, the Balladeer, whose identity becomes a beyond genius twist (that was added in the revival, and I can’t see the musical being as poignant without it). In the recording I know best, my balladeer was Neil Patrick Harris, so my favorite songs had a pop-star clarity and zest to them. Here, the Balladeer is sung like a twangy country singer by Jamie Parker, but it totally works and won me over. So the Balladeer has been on the sidelines all night, telling the tales of others most judgmentally – in the above-quoted “Ballad of Booth”, he reinforces that those madmen who have made us pay “have had their say, but only for a day….Angry men don’t write the rules and guns don’t right the wrongs. Hurts a while but soon the country’s back where it belongs.” But as things come to an end, the Balladeer is not so convinced that the country bounces back so easily, if ever, and he’s more open to discussion about leaving his moral high ground, not wanting to end things as a simple narrator strumming his guitar, but as someone who, like his subjects, will live forever in infamy as long as his target lives forever in fame. Booth tells him that their names will always go hand in hand, that just as Lincoln’s great life and deeds will never be studied without Booth’s being studied and remembered as well, so too will the next great Assassin in this way share the triumphs of his victim. It’s incredibly disturbing and true, that a killer can so easily usurp the greatness of his victim. (I wish so strongly for the media should stop reporting the names of people who commit mass shootings and the like, somehow, if it would make sense. Gaining such immediate fame is often the only goal, and I wish there was a way to not give these awful people the satisfaction of being remembered. (It would also be great if we had legit mental healthcare systems but that’s maybe more farfetched.))
All of this is demonstrated pretty remarkably by The Proprietor, the gun salesman and carnival runner, played hauntingly by Simon Lipkin, who represents a sort of universal id. He lures our characters into the darkness by reminding them of the show’s eerie twisted theme, that “Everybody’s got the right to be happy”. He opens the show with lines like, “Hey kid, failed your test? Dream girl unimpressed? Show her you’re the best – if you can shoot a president”, chillingly blunt lyrics that immediately set the disturbing and blackly humorous tone for the show.
That Sondheim makes you think all of this, makes you laugh and feel heartbroken at the world, all in a 100 or so minute musical is a testament to his genius. That this extremely difficult show is such a rousing success is a testament to the Menier, to this spectacular cast, and to this faultless production, which is now completely sold out, and rightly so. With any luck, it’ll transfer to mainstem West End so more people can appreciate how freaking great this show is.
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An Incredible Oooooklahoma! Like You’ve Never Seen Before
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the 2019 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, which saddest of the sads will close this Sunday, January 19, because of injustice/small theatres/probably Scott Rudin.
You don’t really get many musical theatre fans putting Oklahoma! in their lists of all-time favorite shows. Sure it’s Rodgers & Hammerstein and it’s a classic, but it’s also old-fashioned and kind of meh, a story about farmers loving their corn and their hoedowns and going a-flirtin’ and a-courtin’ and a-bakin’ and all. Or is it? People tend to forget that Oklahoma features legitimate darkness, maybe because it’s usually still treated with a shiny happy gloss while you sing about the surrey with the fringe on top and the good ol’ boys of America. But the current Broadway revival of Oklahoma from director Daniel Fish breaks down the show to its dark, disturbing core, in a truly soul-rattling production that feels more poignant and relevant to modern America than anything written this year.
With the minimalist set design and style (and a lot of guns) and nothing to distract you, this revival of Oklahoma lets everything hang out for you to see in its starkest, realest form. The lines and the lyrics are the same, but how Fish presents it and how the perfect cast performs it manages to turn the show from something cheery and cheesy into something incredibly complex and dark, and even knowing the story and the lyrics, I was concentrating too hard to remember to breathe at times.
The love story at the center is more complicated than ever. The cheerful and fun-loving Curly, as played by the superb Damon Daunno, has an air of unpredictability hidden in his good-natured cheeriness, reflected also in his wandering voice, which can easily go from folksy and relaxed to as strong and moving as anything you hear on Broadway. When he opens the show with “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, my first thought was that I wanted to wake up every day to this rendition, of a song I usually skip! His Curly is still playful, but he’s so clearly the popular kid, a lad in every sense, fun-loving and ‘nice’ but hiding an edge, untrustworthy at a party. The object of his affection, Laurey, is the great Rebecca Naomi Jones, whose flirting and joking around with Curly seems to be based in legitimate confusion about what she actually wants. Her relationship with Jud, the villain who is obsessed with her, is also much more complicated: it doesn’t seem as fully unrequited as it usually is said to be. It’s unclear whether she’s actually attracted to Jud too or whether she’s just terrified into being nice to him, or both, but either way it’s now fascinating instead of casually explained by his wickedness.
Jud, played by Patrick Vaill, is the part of this revival that haunts me. His performance is the toned down yet even more convincing version of Joaquin’s Joker origin story. Everything that makes Jud Fry the villain is done in a way that makes you simultaneously pity him, understand him, and fear him, and he could easily be any mediocre white guy yelling at the internet from his basement while living smaller than he wants to. The part of the show that I usually hate, “Poor Jud is Dead”, was made riveting and tense, as a live video camera projects just Jud’s face in night-vision as he listens to Curly pleasantly torment him. This scene was the most incredible Ivo Van Hove directing I’ve ever seen, much better than when Ivo tries it. Vaill’s subtle emotional reactions – all in his eyes – during this scene were stunning, and made everything about his story so upsetting and so relevant. The original ending, with Jud threatening the lives of Curly and Laurie and ending up, um, “falling on his knife”, now leaves nothing to the imagination about the chain of events but everything up for discussion regarding what’s right and wrong about it.
Laurey’s Aunt Eller, usually somewhat comic, is in Mary Testa’s hands funny but formidable, and her performance after the much-changed climax was as menacing as anything. The real comic relief comes from Ali Stroker’s Ado Annie, James Davis’s Will Parker, and Will Brill’s Ali Hakim, all wonderful, but it’s Ali Stroker who steals the show every time she’s onstage and more than earns last year’s Tony Award. Comparing her version of “I Cain’t Say No” to the movie version, it’s like two completely different songs. She’s worth the Broadway prices alone to see her own that stage.
Every second of this production is exquisite, every beat, every choice felt essential – except the Dream Ballet. I really wanted to like it since I’ve heard so many people have the same review, but I didn’t think it worked at all. It’s a good idea to modernize it as a classic ballet would have felt out of place in this raw production, but I didn’t feel it accomplished anything. The original Dream Ballet is famous for showing that dance can actually further the plot in musical theatre and help tell the story rather than simply be accompaniment, but I didn’t find that to be the case here. Maybe because it didn’t seem like it was actually ‘dancing’, it was like ‘purposeful walking around’.
But aside from that, this revival is perfection. They’ve managed to make something so familiar into something so new, significant, and so chilling. Oklahoma! might not be on my list of favorite shows, but this particular production is one of the most genius things I’ve ever seen.
INFORMATION
Oklahoma! ends its run at the Circle in the Square in NYC on Sunday, January 19.
There’s not a bad seat in the house (it’s in the round, with the back wall closed off). The CITS toilet situation is annoying – downstairs for everyone. They need a new water filling system; the elementary school style water fountain would require you to Andy Dwyer it to actually get anything out of it.
VEGAN ALERT: they serve vegan chili at intermission!!! I do not think the cornbread is vegan but CHILI, MY LITTLE CHILI BABIES! YOU PUT THE PEEPS IN THE CHILI POT AND EAT THEM BOTH UP YOU PUT THE PEEPS IN THE CHILI POT AND ADD THE M&MS! COME ON! DIP YOU PAWS IN MY CHILI! SCOOP YOUR LITTLE MITTENS RIGHT IN THE STEW!
I’m “The Most Happy Fella” Because of Encores! at NY City Center
None of these three guys is the most happy. But they look regular happy.
Does Encores! ever disappoint? No, it really doesn’t. The program’s just-about-one-weekend-only productions (at NY City Center) of classic musicals are always as good as full throttle Broadway productions, and in some cases better. Its recent presentation of “The Most Happy Fella” was the latter type. While the show itself has issues, this production and this spectacular cast were undoubtedly the greatest ever of this musical. If the New York theatre crowd didn’t already know to run, money waving in hand, to the NYCC box office every time an Encores! production was announced, everyone knows now. The full, gorgeous production outshone most of what’s on the boards now, or has been lately, thanks to Casey Nicholaw’s (of “Book of Mormon” fame) efficient direction, good cuts for time, the perfectly cast leads, and most of all the lush, romantic Frank Loesser operatic score.
Yes, “Fella” is totally operatic, but no it is not an opera and don’t call it one or Laura Benanti will yell at you. It feels like one because a lot of the scenes are sung-through in recitatives that aren’t quite full songs on their own, like an opera. Yet it is pure classic musical theatre. But it does require singers (at least in the lead female role of Rosabella) somewhat of opera caliber, and that’s why the casting of Benanti as Rosabella, whose legit soprano voice we don’t get to hear enough in most of her roles, was the key that made this production work so well. Even with the flu – she had the flu baaad the entire run – she was perfection. You could not tell she was sick at all. (She is pretty much the definition of trooper. Also, during her first big song, “Somebody Somewhere”, someone up front sneeze-cough-died SO LOUD I could hear it in the balcony like it was in my ear, and Benanti was completely unfazed. (She told me afterwards that it was “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard”.)) It was crazy how perfect she was in this role of a San Francisco waitress, who finds at the end of the night that a customer left her a lovely pin as a tip, along with a letter written on his menu professing his love for her. Okay yeah, that’s how the show starts, and it sounds corny as hell, but it’s old-fashioned and just swell.
The customer is Tony, an Italian farmer in the Napa Valley, who has to deal with everyone always commenting on how this Italian is so foreign and exotic which is kind of awkward, but then again he still speaks broken English in a very heavy Italian accent so we’ll just let that go. Tony is the biggest-hearted man, but he’s also pretty damn old, which is why Rosabella at first is like ew gross old man get away from me. (She actually says this, sort of.) Well that’s how it is supposed to be, but Shuler Hensley (playing Tony, in his best performance poss ever) is like only ten years older than Benanti. So it just felt mean but whatever. Anyway so plot. Rosabella (this is just what Tony calls the beautiful waitress and what she ends up being called by everyone in Napa; we find out her real name at the end and it’s prettayy funny) writes to the address Tony left on the menu and sends a picture of herself. Tony receives the picture and shares it with his entire community in Napa, and they all perform the title song that has been stuck in my head for 2 weeks now. (Seriously I’m even singing to my dog “YOU’RE THE MOST CUTEST FELLAAAA”.) P.S., we learn that all the gals in Napa shop exclusively at Modcloth. So Tony is the most happy fella, over the moon that she actually responded to his love letter, but then he’s upset, rightly so, that she asks for his picture in return (he’s not the most handsome slightly overweight old man). But then! Cheyenne Jackson, the most gorgeous person to ever walk on this planet (this is not an exaggeration, it’s like even his Wikipedia entry) enters as Joey, Tony’s right-hand farmhand, and Tony’s all heyyyy Joeyyyyy lemme ahh take ahh peetch of ahh youuuuu! Then Cheyenne sings and everyone dies from happy. Including Rosabella, who gets Joey’s picture and is all “This guy’s HAWT I’m gonna go to Napa and marry him!” So, this show is not the most feminist piece of theatre.
Watch the below video to get a feeling for it all. And also to understand why Cheyenne and Laura are two of the best people ever. And everyone else.
The customer is Tony, an Italian farmer in the Napa Valley, who has to deal with everyone always commenting on how this Italian is so foreign and exotic which is kind of awkward, but then again he still speaks broken English in a very heavy Italian accent so we’ll just let that go. Tony is the biggest-hearted man, but he’s also pretty damn old, which is why Rosabella at first is like ew gross old man get away from me. (She actually says this, sort of.) Well that’s how it is supposed to be, but Shuler Hensley (playing Tony, in his best performance poss ever) is like only ten years older than Benanti. So it just felt mean but whatever. Anyway so plot. Rosabella (this is just what Tony calls the beautiful waitress and what she ends up being called by everyone in Napa; we find out her real name at the end and it’s prettayy funny) writes to the address Tony left on the menu and sends a picture of herself. Tony receives the picture and shares it with his entire community in Napa, and they all perform the title song that has been stuck in my head for 2 weeks now. (Seriously I’m even singing to my dog “YOU’RE THE MOST CUTEST FELLAAAA”.) P.S., we learn that all the gals in Napa shop exclusively at Modcloth. So Tony is the most happy fella, over the moon that she actually responded to his love letter, but then he’s upset, rightly so, that she asks for his picture in return (he’s not the most handsome slightly overweight old man). But then! Cheyenne Jackson, the most gorgeous person to ever walk on this planet (this is not an exaggeration, it’s like even his Wikipedia entry) enters as Joey, Tony’s right-hand farmhand, and Tony’s all heyyyy Joeyyyyy lemme ahh take ahh peetch of ahh youuuuu! Then Cheyenne sings and everyone dies from happy. Including Rosabella, who gets Joey’s picture and is all “This guy’s HAWT I’m gonna go to Napa and marry him!” So, this show is not the most feminist piece of theatre.
Watch the below video to get a feeling for it all. And also to understand why Cheyenne and Laura are two of the best people ever. And everyone else.
Rosabella and Tony get to know each other though and, despite Rosabella’s initial anger at being tricked (plus some other sheet that goes down), of course they fall for each other while singing absolutely glorious songs, with a full orchestra (such a rarity nowadays, and such a g-d treat). Meanwhile, Rosabella’s best friend Cleo (Heidi Blickenstaff, hilarious as always but dancier than normal) comes to keep an eye on everything (this is effectively a mail-order bride situation, so good on Cleo for being all um I’m gonna check this shit out…) and falls for a different farmy guy named Herman (Jay Armstrong Johnson, wonderful and FOR REAL channeling Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf…he even says “I love smiling smiling’s my favorite!!” Well he says style but in the same way). They realize they’re both from Dallas and they sing the second most fun song in the entire show, “Big D” (as in “Big D, little A double L-A-S!”). Blickenstaff also sings one of the most ridiculous songs in musical theatre, “Ooh! My Feet!” It is a ballsy way to open a show, with a supporting character rubbing her aching feet and literally wailing “Ooh, my feet, my poor poor feet” and singing about each one of the little piggies. The first time I heard this song I cried from laughing so hard. Blickenstaff’s was a little too well sung and not groany enough for me, but it was still funny.
Texans looove each other
The first most fun song in the show was “Abbondanza”, sung by like chefs getting ready for the wedding (which happened as soon as Rosabella arrived, like wtf give a girl a day or something) and I was crying during it. The three chefs repeat the names of items and then sing “Abbondanza” a lot and I don’t know why but it killed me. It was so well done for comedic effect. That was clearly the work of Nicholaw, because otherwise that song can be kind of dumb. But somehow they made “I frutti i frutti i frutti…la torta la torta la torta…Abbondanza! Abbondanza!” freaking hilarious.
Everything was so perfectly done, but in making the show only 2 acts (instead of the usual 3), some necessary story was cut. Like all of a sudden Rosabella actually does love her old man husband? We think she and Joey are totes into each other but then Joey is not really in the second act? I mean, the end reveal makes all of this make sense, but it could have been written better. However, every other aspect, from the lighting (except for one spotlight mistake) to the costumes to the cast to the direction, was wonderful. Unless a heavenly decree comes down and declares a Broadway run with the same cast (or at least a cast recording for chrissakes), the 5 days when “Fella” was on the Encores! stage will be remembered as one of the most magical times in recent New York theatre.
Everything was so perfectly done, but in making the show only 2 acts (instead of the usual 3), some necessary story was cut. Like all of a sudden Rosabella actually does love her old man husband? We think she and Joey are totes into each other but then Joey is not really in the second act? I mean, the end reveal makes all of this make sense, but it could have been written better. However, every other aspect, from the lighting (except for one spotlight mistake) to the costumes to the cast to the direction, was wonderful. Unless a heavenly decree comes down and declares a Broadway run with the same cast (or at least a cast recording for chrissakes), the 5 days when “Fella” was on the Encores! stage will be remembered as one of the most magical times in recent New York theatre.
