American Buffalo on the West End: Not About The Wild Animal, Sadlyby Randi / June 24, 2015
macauley.cuny.edu
WHAT is happening in London’s opera scene? A whole lot of shit, that’s what’s happening. Like there wasn’t enough misogyny in the world and in all forms of entertainment, now London’s opera bigwigs apparently decided that all the biggest summer productions at the city’s most respected opera houses would not only be anti-feminist but anti-female, pro-rape, pro-violence against women, and not good. Big steaming poop messes are at the English National Opera and the Royal Opera House and are unrelated to this week’s heat wave.
First off, the one that has been in the news. Guillaume Tell at the Royal Opera. This Rossini opera is about William Tell, could you have guessed? You know what’s interesting about this show? It was the last opera Rossini wrote even though he lived for 40 more years after it. I think he was shamed by nighttime visions of this future production that kept him up at night and he was all, I’m never giving these futuristic f**kers any more fodder to be assholes with, or something.
So, it starts with the Lone Ranger theme, and then villagers sing about weddings, archery contests occur, and Swiss people get upset that their country is oppressed (by Austria). After two acts of that comes a scene in which soldier baddies celebrate 100 years Austrian oppression in Switzerland. The baddies drink and sing and then notice that Tell and his son aren’t joining in, so they’re like, oh we gotta arrest you, even though we respect what a great archer you are, do you want to tell your son to run or is he gonna stick around?
So that’s the third act of Guillaume Tell. Do you know what happens in the current abomination at the Royal Opera House? When they celebrate Austrian rule, the soldiers drink and sing and sing and drink, and then they take the servant girl who is providing the alcohol, and they force themselves on her, and they pour all the wine on her so she’s soaked through, and then the men put her on the table and take off her clothes (the audience sees her naked), and all the many many men sexually assault her further at gunpoint before Tell rescues her.
That doesn’t sound like the opera as written, does it? It’s not. That is utter bullshit completely added in by the dirty f**kface director Damiano Michieletto, bag o’ dicks director of opera at Covent Garden Kasper Hotlen, and the producers at the ROH. None of that violence adds anything to the show, so there is no excuse for it. I’m sure they argue that they wanted to show how terrible those men were, but it was not necessary to do so, especially to such an extent. All it really accomplished was reminding everyone in the audience that people still consider violence against women to be totally okay and permitted. Luckily, the audience booed during this scene, so much so that news outlets actually did mention the booing, but how many people walked out? How many cancelled their subscriptions? What’s more important, and disturbing: how many people are now buying tickets to the rest of the performances to catch this ‘newsworthy’ production?
This production should have been vilified for this gratuitous brutality and I know I will not be giving the Royal Opera House any money until they apologize. Indeed, Holten said they will not apologize for the scene and they refuse to edit it even though it will be broadcast in movie theatres. He described it as “an honest attempt to talk about the reality of war” and said people maybe “felt we should have warned them better, as people may not want to be exposed to sexual violence”. That’s not it, you ignorant douchebag. People don’t want to see in their entertainment depictions of what at least 60% of your audience has to live with and fear every day of their lives if it is not necessary to convey the message you hope to. And this was not necessary. Did you know, Kasper, that that’s the definition of gratuitous? I’m sure it was really fun for all you men involved to be like, ‘oh hey we can do this shit because it makes people realize how bad war is.’ A) People know how bad war is. B) All it did was remind people how terrible modern society still is when it comes to understanding rape culture. You, sir, do not understand it.
***
Now to the one that has not received any media attention that I know of, probably because people with the power to make things known in the media don’t really realize how misogynistic this one is, especially since there’s only so much opera coverage allowed by the populace. “Carmen”, Bizet’s famous opera about the wiles of a Gypsy woman, is playing at the English National Opera. First things first, the ENO does all their productions in English. It sucks. I’ve been there a lot, and the productions are sometimes great, but it’s never my or most opera fans preference to see works translated from their original language. I saw “Rigoletto” once in Austria and it was in German instead of Italian. It was terrible. Oh but they did the famous aria “La donna e mobile” in Italian. Just that part.
Moving on, “Carmen” is a pretty misogynistic opera to begin with, but ENO succeeded in making it even more gratuitously so with this ‘modernized’ production. I don’t understand why directors feel the need to unnecessarily change aspects of great works just for the sake of changing it, when it doesn’t add any artistic value. There are some alterations or reimaginings or revivals that are worthy, like the recent “Spring Awakening” production in California that used many deaf and disabled cast members to highlight the rampant lack of understanding and capability in the show. That sounds brilliant. The half-assed modernization of “Carmen” was not: it kept most of the same ideas – lots of soldiers, being in Spain, smugglers – and added hysterically hideous ‘90s-era-Italy outfits and like 6 cars, doing the smuggling, onstage at one time. I don’t know what they were going for.
So “Carmen” tells the story of a seductive gypsy who seduces men and is a gypsy. She is a cigarette girl among hundreds of cigarette girls who apparently work in the same barracks as hundreds of soldiers. It was a big cast. The soldiers are all disgusting. They treat the women like toys and Carmen like a piece of meat. They grope everyone and repeatedly stick her face in their crotchular regions. But Carmen enjoys it, apparently, because she is seductive, so she is asking for it. Hence it being a super misogynistic show as written, differentiating it from the above monstrosity.
The soldiers beg for her to choose a lover and stop taunting them by existing, so she chooses Jose, who was ignoring her. Smart plan! She sings her super famous aria that goes ‘da dum dum dum!’ about how those who love her should beware. Then all the girls fight like really actually fight, because who doesn’t love women fighting and hitting and scratching each other with their claws? Carmen is accused of whipping out a knife in what should have been merely a skin fight, so the male official says she’s going to be arrested and tells Jose to tie her hands together while they figure out what to do because small man brain. That’s what happens normally.
Here, the men tie Carmen to a flagpole with the official’s workbelt, take off her shirtdress, and position her so she’s on her knees. People I talked to at intermission thought this was disgusting. One woman who knows the opera well felt that tying her up completely, as opposed to just her hands, unnecessarily made her subordinate and submissive and was just gross.
Carmen then beguiles Jose, tasked with guarding her, and he becomes pretty infatuated with her. He lets her escape, whereupon he is imprisoned for a month or two.
When he gets out, he and we find Carmen with her smuggler friends, who are driving regular-sized cars across the stage to show how modern the show is. Three women (and one little girl, sadly) compose the group with 3 or so indistinguishably disgusting men, who assault them and grope them all with no regard for which woman it is or what she’s doing or how drunk she is (very drunk). They meet Escamillo, the famous toreador, who sings the famous toreador song (and not very well, also sadly). Escamillo ‘falls in love’ with Carmen, who is instead in love with her Jose, whom she is now seeing for the second time ever. Jose has to go back to camp for nighttime, and Carmen, being an awful no good female who doesn’t understand that men have to work, gets really upset that he isn’t willing to sacrifice his job for her, because if he really loved her he would. This is apparently how Rossini thought women’s little brains worked. As written, Jose’s superior officer arrives looking for Carmen (every man thinks he is in love with her), and Jose fights him. Having done that, he can’t go back to soldiering, so he joins the smugglers.
Here, he punches Carmen instead, for mocking his need to go back to work. She falls to the ground in fetal position, where she remains while Jose sings not about how he’s sorry but about how much he loves her. Then he cuddles up next to her and declares his love more. And what choice does she have but to accept it? What other kind of love could she possibly know?
Then more cars appear and it’s really just nonsense.
Then, Carmen gets bored with Jose, because that’s how women are, those fickle people, and the toreador tells her he loves her. Hey guess what, she returns the favor now. That happens really with no build up, I thought she was lying, but that’s how women do, just transfer affection really easily when they’re bored. Then Carmen and her friends do tarot cards, and Carmen gets the one saying she’s going to die. No one else seems really worried, though Carmen tells them it’s probably Jose.
Escamillo invites pretty much all of Spain to see him in his next bull-fight, and during that famous song we get to watch 100 or so actors in neon shorts and smartphones jumping up and down in unison for a good 2 minutes. It’s like they stopped trying. Anyway, outside the arena, Carmen and her two girlfriends are about to enter, before they leave her and are like, ‘Hey don’t get killed, we know that’s a possibility but we’re going to leave you alone now.’ Carmen keeps a watchful eye until she needs to do her makeup, and Jose sneaks in while she is looking in the compact, because oh girls with their makeup! So silly! So Jose is devastated that she no longer wants to be with him, even though he hit her, and even though now she loves someone else, so he kills her. At the end, after Jose kills her, he normally confesses to the murder. Here, instead, he grabs her by the lifeless foot and drags her offstage as the lights go out. Cute!
So ENO is not nearly as guilty as ROH for disgusting and gratuitous anti-female sentiment, because so much of it is in the text, but how they chose to augment what was already a plethora of misogyny reinforces how normal all the people involved considered it to be. This already has violence against women, but let’s make it worse! This one doesn’t have violence against women, so let’s add a lot, for art’s sake. It’s not art, guys. It’s violence, and it’s perpetuating the acceptance and sickening tolerance of rape culture.
So that’s the third act of Guillaume Tell. Do you know what happens in the current abomination at the Royal Opera House? When they celebrate Austrian rule, the soldiers drink and sing and sing and drink, and then they take the servant girl who is providing the alcohol, and they force themselves on her, and they pour all the wine on her so she’s soaked through, and then the men put her on the table and take off her clothes (the audience sees her naked), and all the many many men sexually assault her further at gunpoint before Tell rescues her.
That doesn’t sound like the opera as written, does it? It’s not. That is utter bullshit completely added in by the dirty f**kface director Damiano Michieletto, bag o’ dicks director of opera at Covent Garden Kasper Hotlen, and the producers at the ROH. None of that violence adds anything to the show, so there is no excuse for it. I’m sure they argue that they wanted to show how terrible those men were, but it was not necessary to do so, especially to such an extent. All it really accomplished was reminding everyone in the audience that people still consider violence against women to be totally okay and permitted. Luckily, the audience booed during this scene, so much so that news outlets actually did mention the booing, but how many people walked out? How many cancelled their subscriptions? What’s more important, and disturbing: how many people are now buying tickets to the rest of the performances to catch this ‘newsworthy’ production?
This production should have been vilified for this gratuitous brutality and I know I will not be giving the Royal Opera House any money until they apologize. Indeed, Holten said they will not apologize for the scene and they refuse to edit it even though it will be broadcast in movie theatres. He described it as “an honest attempt to talk about the reality of war” and said people maybe “felt we should have warned them better, as people may not want to be exposed to sexual violence”. That’s not it, you ignorant douchebag. People don’t want to see in their entertainment depictions of what at least 60% of your audience has to live with and fear every day of their lives if it is not necessary to convey the message you hope to. And this was not necessary. Did you know, Kasper, that that’s the definition of gratuitous? I’m sure it was really fun for all you men involved to be like, ‘oh hey we can do this shit because it makes people realize how bad war is.’ A) People know how bad war is. B) All it did was remind people how terrible modern society still is when it comes to understanding rape culture. You, sir, do not understand it.
***
Now to the one that has not received any media attention that I know of, probably because people with the power to make things known in the media don’t really realize how misogynistic this one is, especially since there’s only so much opera coverage allowed by the populace. “Carmen”, Bizet’s famous opera about the wiles of a Gypsy woman, is playing at the English National Opera. First things first, the ENO does all their productions in English. It sucks. I’ve been there a lot, and the productions are sometimes great, but it’s never my or most opera fans preference to see works translated from their original language. I saw “Rigoletto” once in Austria and it was in German instead of Italian. It was terrible. Oh but they did the famous aria “La donna e mobile” in Italian. Just that part.
Moving on, “Carmen” is a pretty misogynistic opera to begin with, but ENO succeeded in making it even more gratuitously so with this ‘modernized’ production. I don’t understand why directors feel the need to unnecessarily change aspects of great works just for the sake of changing it, when it doesn’t add any artistic value. There are some alterations or reimaginings or revivals that are worthy, like the recent “Spring Awakening” production in California that used many deaf and disabled cast members to highlight the rampant lack of understanding and capability in the show. That sounds brilliant. The half-assed modernization of “Carmen” was not: it kept most of the same ideas – lots of soldiers, being in Spain, smugglers – and added hysterically hideous ‘90s-era-Italy outfits and like 6 cars, doing the smuggling, onstage at one time. I don’t know what they were going for.
So “Carmen” tells the story of a seductive gypsy who seduces men and is a gypsy. She is a cigarette girl among hundreds of cigarette girls who apparently work in the same barracks as hundreds of soldiers. It was a big cast. The soldiers are all disgusting. They treat the women like toys and Carmen like a piece of meat. They grope everyone and repeatedly stick her face in their crotchular regions. But Carmen enjoys it, apparently, because she is seductive, so she is asking for it. Hence it being a super misogynistic show as written, differentiating it from the above monstrosity.
The soldiers beg for her to choose a lover and stop taunting them by existing, so she chooses Jose, who was ignoring her. Smart plan! She sings her super famous aria that goes ‘da dum dum dum!’ about how those who love her should beware. Then all the girls fight like really actually fight, because who doesn’t love women fighting and hitting and scratching each other with their claws? Carmen is accused of whipping out a knife in what should have been merely a skin fight, so the male official says she’s going to be arrested and tells Jose to tie her hands together while they figure out what to do because small man brain. That’s what happens normally.
Here, the men tie Carmen to a flagpole with the official’s workbelt, take off her shirtdress, and position her so she’s on her knees. People I talked to at intermission thought this was disgusting. One woman who knows the opera well felt that tying her up completely, as opposed to just her hands, unnecessarily made her subordinate and submissive and was just gross.
Carmen then beguiles Jose, tasked with guarding her, and he becomes pretty infatuated with her. He lets her escape, whereupon he is imprisoned for a month or two.
When he gets out, he and we find Carmen with her smuggler friends, who are driving regular-sized cars across the stage to show how modern the show is. Three women (and one little girl, sadly) compose the group with 3 or so indistinguishably disgusting men, who assault them and grope them all with no regard for which woman it is or what she’s doing or how drunk she is (very drunk). They meet Escamillo, the famous toreador, who sings the famous toreador song (and not very well, also sadly). Escamillo ‘falls in love’ with Carmen, who is instead in love with her Jose, whom she is now seeing for the second time ever. Jose has to go back to camp for nighttime, and Carmen, being an awful no good female who doesn’t understand that men have to work, gets really upset that he isn’t willing to sacrifice his job for her, because if he really loved her he would. This is apparently how Rossini thought women’s little brains worked. As written, Jose’s superior officer arrives looking for Carmen (every man thinks he is in love with her), and Jose fights him. Having done that, he can’t go back to soldiering, so he joins the smugglers.
Here, he punches Carmen instead, for mocking his need to go back to work. She falls to the ground in fetal position, where she remains while Jose sings not about how he’s sorry but about how much he loves her. Then he cuddles up next to her and declares his love more. And what choice does she have but to accept it? What other kind of love could she possibly know?
Then more cars appear and it’s really just nonsense.
Then, Carmen gets bored with Jose, because that’s how women are, those fickle people, and the toreador tells her he loves her. Hey guess what, she returns the favor now. That happens really with no build up, I thought she was lying, but that’s how women do, just transfer affection really easily when they’re bored. Then Carmen and her friends do tarot cards, and Carmen gets the one saying she’s going to die. No one else seems really worried, though Carmen tells them it’s probably Jose.
Escamillo invites pretty much all of Spain to see him in his next bull-fight, and during that famous song we get to watch 100 or so actors in neon shorts and smartphones jumping up and down in unison for a good 2 minutes. It’s like they stopped trying. Anyway, outside the arena, Carmen and her two girlfriends are about to enter, before they leave her and are like, ‘Hey don’t get killed, we know that’s a possibility but we’re going to leave you alone now.’ Carmen keeps a watchful eye until she needs to do her makeup, and Jose sneaks in while she is looking in the compact, because oh girls with their makeup! So silly! So Jose is devastated that she no longer wants to be with him, even though he hit her, and even though now she loves someone else, so he kills her. At the end, after Jose kills her, he normally confesses to the murder. Here, instead, he grabs her by the lifeless foot and drags her offstage as the lights go out. Cute!
So ENO is not nearly as guilty as ROH for disgusting and gratuitous anti-female sentiment, because so much of it is in the text, but how they chose to augment what was already a plethora of misogyny reinforces how normal all the people involved considered it to be. This already has violence against women, but let’s make it worse! This one doesn’t have violence against women, so let’s add a lot, for art’s sake. It’s not art, guys. It’s violence, and it’s perpetuating the acceptance and sickening tolerance of rape culture.
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Fairview at the Young Vic: White People, Feel Bad!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Fairview, playing at London’s Young Vic until January 23.
I really hate when writers include spoilers in reviews, like they can’t write about the show without ruining it for everyone. I’ll do my best to avoid them here, but it’s kind of impossible to talk about the power of Fairview, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, without spoilers, so gird your loins/stop reading if you are going to see it. Now making its London debut, the play by Jackie Sibblies Drury ends in a way I can’t say any other theatrical work ever has. Even aside from that ending, it’s hard to talk about the play in general because it’s about that incredibly difficult thing to talk about as a white person: race and how terrible white people are. Okay that second part might not be the point, but if you are a white audience member who walks away from the show not feeling completely shitty then you maybe weren’t paying attention (like to the world either). I’ll try to not say anything ignorant, but I am a whitey, so, WE’LL SEE.
Fairview tells of a middle-class black family preparing for Grandma’s big birthday dinner: You have the mom trying to do everything perfectly, the feisty (and hilarious) aunt with the strong opinions, the husband who actually remembered to buy the root vegetables!, the daughter who is nervous about graduating high school. You have the set of a very large, plush home, very beigey-pinks and grays, very Miami in the 1980s that felt a little sitcommy at first and then, as the play progresses, a lot sitcommy. The first section of the play, as the family prepares dinner and argues and jokes with each other, is – like a sitcom – extremely pleasant, very funny, and opens a lot of doors to what kind of action could come next for the family.
And then, no further action comes. Instead of showing what happens with the big birthday dinner, or if the uncle’s plane will take off, or what the daughter will decide about college, instead the rug is pulled out from under you and the sitcommy feel is substantiated. The actors restart, and they go through the entirety of the first section blocking again, but silently. We see the movements and spills and gestures and little dances for the second time, but now the audio is the voiceover conversation of four white people watching this program, talking about the characters, talking about race. It’s a shock, and it’s awkward, interesting, and disturbing the whole time. The four viewers are the kind of people who will proclaim nicely “I’m definitely not racist!” but then in the same breath say a lot of racist things that aren’t obviously mean or cruel but are still wrong, the kind of people who, as we hear, casually converse about ‘what race you’d pick if you could change’. It is a bold gear change into a provocative flat-out conversation about race, except without a knowledgeable or culturally sensitive voice in the bunch.
And that’s the bit that’s slightly disappointing. It’s not the play’s fault but that of its marketing/other reviews, for saying that this is ‘the play that will make ‘woke’ white liberals realize their mistakes’ or whatever. As a white liberal, I was, as I am with all things purporting to show me how wrong I am, eager to learn what I’m doing wrong and try to improve. But these four white people are blatantly terrible people. They are not ‘woke’ and they are nothing like the people who would be described as or would describe themselves as being ‘woke’, at least if the people had any idea what that (annoying) word was supposed to mean. And liberal? I’m sure at least some of them would be Trump voters. They say clearly racist things and treat race like it’s a fashion choice. It’s worthwhile to show that the things they say and think and eventually do are problematic, but anyone who didn’t already know how problematic these ideas were already miiiiiiight be racist! Or living under a rock.
The third section dives even more into the surreal, with the two worlds mixing into eventual chaos, perhaps representing the kinds of conversations we try to have without better guidance, and perhaps representing the problems we face when white people ‘want to help’ but also don’t want to acknowledge, or give up, their privilege. That reluctance to give up your privilege comes to a head at the end, when the tables turn and the white audience members literally become the object of stage-lit scrutiny, and their (our) hesitance to listen to the cast’s urgings become the subject of this wider, provocative discussion on privilege, entitlement, and expectations. I can’t imagine any white person seeing this, experiencing this ending especially, and not feeling exposed, guilty, uncomfortable at the very least, so that’s good, I guess, for self-reflection. But who knows how many people who needed to feel that momentary guilt and shame took it into their actual lives? And it’s not up to me to say that that momentary guilt and shame was worth making the people of color in the audience feel even more like the objects of white gaze, under scrutiny as well.
So I was left afterwards with a kind of numbed sensation, embarrassed (in part because of stage fright). The play is the definition of provocative, leaving your mind a blur of jumbled thoughts and emotions, which can be the mark of a successful dramatic work. It’s confrontational, it’s fascinating, and you feel uncomfortable the whole time. Now, after trying to write something the least bit coherent (I failed didn’t I) I feel even more ignorant and needing to do and be better, which might after all be what Drury had in mind.
Fun Home Brings Its Magic to London
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about the musical Fun Home, which is playing at London’s Young Vic until September 1.
I haven’t been this nervous about a show in a long time. Experiencing the original Broadway production of Fun Home in 2015 was one of the most magical theatrical moments I’ve had. Everything about it was absolute perfection, including the first truly great use of the Circle in the Square Theatre’s setup in the round. I worried that the show would lose some of its power and emotional depth without that original cast that I so adored, without the circular theatre, without the extra tinge of greatness that Broadway musicals tend to have. Fortunately, Fun Home is in good hands at London’s Young Vic theatre, such good hands that I was dehydrated for days from all the crying.
I haven’t been this nervous about a show in a long time. Experiencing the original Broadway production of Fun Home in 2015 was one of the most magical theatrical moments I’ve had. Everything about it was absolute perfection, including the first truly great use of the Circle in the Square Theatre’s setup in the round. I worried that the show would lose some of its power and emotional depth without that original cast that I so adored, without the circular theatre, without the extra tinge of greatness that Broadway musicals tend to have. Fortunately, Fun Home is in good hands at London’s Young Vic theatre, such good hands that I was dehydrated for days from all the crying.
Fun Home is the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 autobiographical graphic (autobiographical maybe?) of the same name, in which she delves into her childhood and her relationship with her father, who she learned was gay soon after she herself came out, and shortly before his suicide. The musical features Alison at three ages – as an adult, a new college student (Medium Alison), and as a 10-year-old kid (Small Alison). Now age 43, Alison, the ‘lesbian cartoonist’, as she calls herself, is sorting through her father’s old belongings and other mementos from her old house and her family’s funeral home in order to form her graphic novel. The adult Alison, played by a solid Kaisa Hammarlund, is prodded into memories as she looks at these belongings, and the moments from the two earlier stages of her life play out on the stage before her as she remembers them and starts to document them in her cartoons.
Hammarlund’s Big Alison carried the structure of the play well, with the memories eliciting reactions from her ranging from angry to embarrassed to remorseful. Her anger came when we saw her father stopping Small Alison (Harriet Turnbull) from expressing herself as she wanted to, or from her father’s quick temper and, sometimes, rage. Her embarrassment often came from truly hilarious moments of seeing her college-aged self try to sound smart but end up completely mortified. The great thing about getting different and unique incarnations of this show now is that different characters will shine the brightest depending on the cast and the interpretation. On Broadway, the discovery of the extraordinary Sydney Lucas, a one-in-a-million phenom of a child actor, stole the show with her natural, moving Small Alison and her showstopper ‘Ring of Keys’, where she first sees the kind of butch lesbian that feels so right to her. While that doesn’t mean regularly talented child actors like Turnbull do any less of a moving portrait of Small Alison – she was very good and had the audience completely taken – it means that the balance changes. Here, Medium Alison (Eleanor Kane) stood out as the showstopper, especially with her exceptional performance of “Changing My Major”, where her first sexual experience (with Cherrelle Skeete’s wonderful Joan) forces her to be completely vulnerable, uproariously funny (her little jumps!), and so touching all at once. Hers was a stunning performance and the standout of the night.
Well, one of the standouts; it’s a show full of magical moments. Big Alison’s remorse turned into another such moment in an emotionally resonant and brilliant part (of a show that is entirely brilliant and emotional): during the song “Telephone Wire”, when her memory of her last moments with her father shift his focus from Medium Alison to Big Alison herself, implanting herself into the past to try to futilely change it yet again. Bruce’s gaze moving to the daughter he never got to see as an adult is the kind of moment in a play where, if you are human, you’ll start making little yelpy puppy sounds as you try to suppress your overwhelming sobs. The impact of this moment felt real, and a scene that is heartbreaking simply as written takes on new tragic life.
But even though the story is ostensibly about Alison, it’s her father, Bruce (Zubin Varla), who becomes the focus. Varla takes the complex character of Bruce in a different direction from Michael Cerveris, the original Bruce. Cerveris played him much more natural and reserved, so his anger was shocking, his truly cruel comments to his family seeming unforgivable but infrequent. Varla, on the other hand, had crazy eyes most of the time, so his unstable emotional state was evident and it let his rage fly off the handle more. It was clearer, and for longer, how troubled this Bruce was, and even though I think I prefer the more grounded take – the one that sees the ache in an everyman rather than someone who is more obviously troubled – his interpretation was valid and equally moving. His brilliant introduction – letting the audience see how much he values the beauty he sees in the world – before we see how fast he can descend into rage, is so well done, as are his interactions with all the young men in his life (played by a talented Ashley Samuels) especially when contrasted with how he treats his family in similar situations.
As Alison’s mother Helen, Jenna Russell masterfully harnesses her coldness and uses it as a weapon against her family and her own vulnerability. As usual, Helen’s big song “Days and Days” is set up and performed flawlessly, in a truly remarkable bit of songwriting that lets you understand all of her character’s motivations but completely disagree with her. The big change from the show being presented in the round paid off in this scene, when the set of the house changes into a surprisingly larger, lavish one. I was surprised that it didn’t stay in the round, especially since I’ve seen productions in the round at the Young Vic, and since the original director, Sam Gold, apparently directed this production too. But the changes worked, especially in this scene, and it was interesting to see the show presented from a regular proscenium, although Bruce’s final scenes felt a little static.
The brilliant songwriting is really the star of this show, the reason why it resonates and why every inch of it feels necessary and special. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s score and book stand with the best of musical theatre. When I first heard some of it, I thought it was a little too simple. But its lack of big belted numbers or traditional musical theatre moments in favor of personal connection and delicate motifs makes it such a singular achievement in telling such an intimate story. Moments that I thought at first were to lift the somber mood, like when Small Alison imagines her family as a happy singing and dancing one like she watches on TV in “Raincoat of Love”, actually had me crying: It’s not a goofy break from the drama; it’s a heartbreaking look at the kind of happiness this poor child wishes she had. It’s forking sad. Okay so “Come to the Fun Home” is still a very silly moment that lets the kids have fun, but it’s followed by a scene that I don’t remember being so harrowing – when Bruce calls Small Alison in and she sees her first dead body. This small moment was riveting, especially with Big Alison’s anger at remembering this moment and her frustration that she’ll never understand her father’s reasons for doing it.
Such precise, flawless writing feels wrong to change, so the few lyric changes I noticed I don’t really understand. In the beginning, Small Alison originally orders her father to play airplane with her and sings “I wanna play airplane/I wanna put my arms out and fly/Like the Red Baron in the Sopwith Camel”. Apparently that’s a reference to Peanuts, when Snoopy pretends to fly on his doghouse. I don’t know anything about the Sopwith Camel or Snoopy pretending to fly in Peanuts but I know the Red Baron, so the line made overall sense to me – she wants to fly like a plane. To quote my girl Tahani, you can get some of these from context. But in this production, it’s changed to “I wanna put my arms out and fly/like Snoopy and the Red Baron”. Is that really a change that helps people get the reference? I feel like you either know that reference or you don’t, so it’s an odd change for me, dog.
But it’s a tiny non-issue with an overall great production of this incredible show. It’s by far the best musical playing in London right now. I love that such a small show about such specific characters feels so universal, and that it’s getting the chance to be loved by a new audience.
AUDIENCE
Since this is the first (only?) show with a lesbian protagonist and it’s heavily about characters’ sexuality, it’s drawing a more diverse crowd that you see in the theatre usually, which is awesome. But it means some possibly new theatergoers are not used to theatre etiquette. When Medium Alison writes home, “Dear mom and dad, I’m a lesbian”, one or two audience members whooped and shouted YASS. Audiences, I get that it’s amazing when you feel represented in art, but if you want to be a part of the action, become an actor. It is not a YAS moment. In fact, there are no YAS moments in this show. And just for everyone’s edification, don’t talk or sing along or bullshit like that in the theatre unless everyone onstage makes it clear that they want you to do so (e.g. during “No Time At All” in Pippin, and during the curtain call of “Mamma Mia!”. Pretty sure that’s it).
Shout out to the one usher at the Young Vic who was READY to snatch cell phones. We could be friends.
Hammarlund’s Big Alison carried the structure of the play well, with the memories eliciting reactions from her ranging from angry to embarrassed to remorseful. Her anger came when we saw her father stopping Small Alison (Harriet Turnbull) from expressing herself as she wanted to, or from her father’s quick temper and, sometimes, rage. Her embarrassment often came from truly hilarious moments of seeing her college-aged self try to sound smart but end up completely mortified. The great thing about getting different and unique incarnations of this show now is that different characters will shine the brightest depending on the cast and the interpretation. On Broadway, the discovery of the extraordinary Sydney Lucas, a one-in-a-million phenom of a child actor, stole the show with her natural, moving Small Alison and her showstopper ‘Ring of Keys’, where she first sees the kind of butch lesbian that feels so right to her. While that doesn’t mean regularly talented child actors like Turnbull do any less of a moving portrait of Small Alison – she was very good and had the audience completely taken – it means that the balance changes. Here, Medium Alison (Eleanor Kane) stood out as the showstopper, especially with her exceptional performance of “Changing My Major”, where her first sexual experience (with Cherrelle Skeete’s wonderful Joan) forces her to be completely vulnerable, uproariously funny (her little jumps!), and so touching all at once. Hers was a stunning performance and the standout of the night.
Well, one of the standouts; it’s a show full of magical moments. Big Alison’s remorse turned into another such moment in an emotionally resonant and brilliant part (of a show that is entirely brilliant and emotional): during the song “Telephone Wire”, when her memory of her last moments with her father shift his focus from Medium Alison to Big Alison herself, implanting herself into the past to try to futilely change it yet again. Bruce’s gaze moving to the daughter he never got to see as an adult is the kind of moment in a play where, if you are human, you’ll start making little yelpy puppy sounds as you try to suppress your overwhelming sobs. The impact of this moment felt real, and a scene that is heartbreaking simply as written takes on new tragic life.
But even though the story is ostensibly about Alison, it’s her father, Bruce (Zubin Varla), who becomes the focus. Varla takes the complex character of Bruce in a different direction from Michael Cerveris, the original Bruce. Cerveris played him much more natural and reserved, so his anger was shocking, his truly cruel comments to his family seeming unforgivable but infrequent. Varla, on the other hand, had crazy eyes most of the time, so his unstable emotional state was evident and it let his rage fly off the handle more. It was clearer, and for longer, how troubled this Bruce was, and even though I think I prefer the more grounded take – the one that sees the ache in an everyman rather than someone who is more obviously troubled – his interpretation was valid and equally moving. His brilliant introduction – letting the audience see how much he values the beauty he sees in the world – before we see how fast he can descend into rage, is so well done, as are his interactions with all the young men in his life (played by a talented Ashley Samuels) especially when contrasted with how he treats his family in similar situations.
As Alison’s mother Helen, Jenna Russell masterfully harnesses her coldness and uses it as a weapon against her family and her own vulnerability. As usual, Helen’s big song “Days and Days” is set up and performed flawlessly, in a truly remarkable bit of songwriting that lets you understand all of her character’s motivations but completely disagree with her. The big change from the show being presented in the round paid off in this scene, when the set of the house changes into a surprisingly larger, lavish one. I was surprised that it didn’t stay in the round, especially since I’ve seen productions in the round at the Young Vic, and since the original director, Sam Gold, apparently directed this production too. But the changes worked, especially in this scene, and it was interesting to see the show presented from a regular proscenium, although Bruce’s final scenes felt a little static.
The brilliant songwriting is really the star of this show, the reason why it resonates and why every inch of it feels necessary and special. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s score and book stand with the best of musical theatre. When I first heard some of it, I thought it was a little too simple. But its lack of big belted numbers or traditional musical theatre moments in favor of personal connection and delicate motifs makes it such a singular achievement in telling such an intimate story. Moments that I thought at first were to lift the somber mood, like when Small Alison imagines her family as a happy singing and dancing one like she watches on TV in “Raincoat of Love”, actually had me crying: It’s not a goofy break from the drama; it’s a heartbreaking look at the kind of happiness this poor child wishes she had. It’s forking sad. Okay so “Come to the Fun Home” is still a very silly moment that lets the kids have fun, but it’s followed by a scene that I don’t remember being so harrowing – when Bruce calls Small Alison in and she sees her first dead body. This small moment was riveting, especially with Big Alison’s anger at remembering this moment and her frustration that she’ll never understand her father’s reasons for doing it.
Such precise, flawless writing feels wrong to change, so the few lyric changes I noticed I don’t really understand. In the beginning, Small Alison originally orders her father to play airplane with her and sings “I wanna play airplane/I wanna put my arms out and fly/Like the Red Baron in the Sopwith Camel”. Apparently that’s a reference to Peanuts, when Snoopy pretends to fly on his doghouse. I don’t know anything about the Sopwith Camel or Snoopy pretending to fly in Peanuts but I know the Red Baron, so the line made overall sense to me – she wants to fly like a plane. To quote my girl Tahani, you can get some of these from context. But in this production, it’s changed to “I wanna put my arms out and fly/like Snoopy and the Red Baron”. Is that really a change that helps people get the reference? I feel like you either know that reference or you don’t, so it’s an odd change for me, dog.
But it’s a tiny non-issue with an overall great production of this incredible show. It’s by far the best musical playing in London right now. I love that such a small show about such specific characters feels so universal, and that it’s getting the chance to be loved by a new audience.
AUDIENCE
Since this is the first (only?) show with a lesbian protagonist and it’s heavily about characters’ sexuality, it’s drawing a more diverse crowd that you see in the theatre usually, which is awesome. But it means some possibly new theatergoers are not used to theatre etiquette. When Medium Alison writes home, “Dear mom and dad, I’m a lesbian”, one or two audience members whooped and shouted YASS. Audiences, I get that it’s amazing when you feel represented in art, but if you want to be a part of the action, become an actor. It is not a YAS moment. In fact, there are no YAS moments in this show. And just for everyone’s edification, don’t talk or sing along or bullshit like that in the theatre unless everyone onstage makes it clear that they want you to do so (e.g. during “No Time At All” in Pippin, and during the curtain call of “Mamma Mia!”. Pretty sure that’s it).
Shout out to the one usher at the Young Vic who was READY to snatch cell phones. We could be friends.
