Deaf West's "Spring Awakening" Puts All Other Awakenings To Shameby Randi / November 11, 2015
Okay, gonna say this right off the bat: this review won’t be as enjoyable as last year’s, because this production was infinitely more enjoyable than last year’s (it’s an inverse correlation thing)! Heck, “The Wiz” in any form is usually more enjoyable than “Peter Pan” in any form, except maybe in the “Once Upon A Time” version of Peter Pan because evil baby Peter as Rumplestiltskin’s father (what the HELL) was hilariously awesome and I’m getting sick sick sick of Zelena. Anyway.
Queen Latifah’s preshow pretaped message was a good move, because since she is Queen of all Queens, I was already hooked and in Theatre Mode. Phone off, shut your face or I’ll punch you, put that candy away, &c. Hot damn I love me some Latifs.
The show itself started with the 3 wise men/Dorothy’s Oz friends/Dorothy’s farmhands in their regular lives before they become the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Not ‘before they are dreamt of as those 3’ but before they become them, because one of my biggest problems with “The Wizard of Oz” is that we’re supposed to believe everything was a dream, which is bullshit. BULL. SHIT. I was very happy to see one of my favorite performers, Elijah Kelley, here as the Scarecrow, because even though we’ve only ever seen him in the newest “Hairspray” movie, that’s enough because a) that movie is perfect (if I were on an iPhone I’d use that red 100 emoji) and b) the year it came out the whole cast premiered songs from it live at ShoWest and I was fangirling at the front of the stage because I was the only non-old-white-old-man in the room so it was like ALL FOR ME and I was like ‘Angelica, ELIJAH!’ that whole time.
Dorothy, played by total newcomer Shanice Williams, begins by being such a teenager all huffy about how this farm isn’t her home and she wants to go home and are you too good for your home, but then Auntie Em, played by Stephanie Mills – as in, Stephanie Mills the original Dorothy in the original “The Wiz” Broadway production! – sings the first song about how like, your parents died in that accident and I hope soon you are back to your normal self because I don’t know how to make you feel better about being an orphan, no one does because that’s f-ing terrible. Starting a show with a ballad instead of a rousing company-wide upbeat number is my Theatre No-no #1, well aside from Not Sucking, because such songs immediately bring energy levels down – so when you are just starting, you’re at level 0 energy, and then it brings you into negatives, and most of America doesn’t get how negatives even work because public education is in shambles, so it’s just not the best way to begin. However, Mills is pretty great considering it’s a super-cold open and she’s a ledge. But then things get going with the COOLEST FREAKING TORNADO I’ve ever seen. Damn! I think my only point of reference might be ‘Twister’, and the news, but this used some wonderful special effects both in the form of projections and, much cooler, in the form of lots of chorus boys spinning around all crazy like. I very much enjoyed this tornado and hope I am never in a real one.
The camera starts to go fuzzayyyy and then it focuses on Dorothy, her broke ass house, and shiny towers of Oz!! Wheee! Munchkins come out and they are wearing adorable costumes and are NOT midgets being exploited! Huzzah! They’re acting all serious and adorable and mad about how the house killed someone wearing silver heels hella difficult to walk in (maybe that’s what killed her), but then they’re like NO WE’RE SO HAPPY YOU KILLED A STRANGER LET’S HAVE A PARTY INSTEAD OF EXPLAINING IT ADEQUATELY TO YOU SO YOU AREN’T SCARRED FOR LIFE! and then freaking Amber Riley, wasted for years on “Glee” until we almost forgot what a talent she really is, comes out and shouts “Hey girl, I’m Glinda, oh wait just kidding, I’m ‘Addaperle, the feel-good girl’; there’s another good witch in this version named Glinda, she’s really cool too.” I CAN’T WAIT!
We hear some dumb lines in this updated book by Harvey Fierstein, whom I absolutely adoooore, but he wasn’t the right choice for this show. I mean. Old Jewish white boy, traditionally black and urban hip hop musical….There’s a bleh line about having sushi for lunch and something else I immediately put out of mind, and then Amber lets loose on “He’s the Wiz” and it’s pretty amazing, stupid Ryan Murphy kept her on lockdown for so many years. She does a sort of “And I Am Telling You” ending to a whatever song, with Shanice getting her first sung lines, well a few ‘ahh’s. Sounded great! Why has Dorothy still not had a song??!!
Yay here she goes! For Shanice’s first song, “Soon as I Get Home”, she needed a minute or two to shake out the nerves, but she proved how impressive she is. Great job! It’s still a super R&B slow-jam song though. And yes, this show is famously R&B, but so far it’s all the same kind of sound. We need something more energetic to cut all these power ballads!
We cut to that unfairly incredible commercial with Taraji, Kerry, and Mary J., and I’m like, damn, why am I not cooking and dancing with those ladies rn? What do I have to do to be in that commercial with them but in real life?
We come back to the show and see, on the scarecrow’s pole, that weird and scary guy Cillian Murphy played in “Batman Begins” with that burlap sack mask. Or it’s Elijah Kelley wearing that same weird and scary mask, covering up his pretty little face. He’s surrounded by really scary mean crow-men, who he says have been filling his head with all manner of nonsense. I think the crows represent the republican presidential candidates and OMG, I’m right, they just began the ‘Crow Commandments’, really called “You Can’t Win”, but I like my title better. It’s such a fun, upbeat (yay finally!) song considering how dire the message is – you can’t win, you can’t get out of the game, you are screwed forever, just give up. It must be hard to sing in your best voice when there is a pole stuck up your butt and you’re just hanging there with no breath support, but he does a decent job. I know there’s better from him to come though. His spoken lines are hilarious with his fast timing: “Do you know what?” “I know nothing!”
HERE WE GO! Next comes the most famous song of the whole ‘70s, “Ease on Down the Road”. I dare you, no, I double dog triple cat dare you, not to sing along whenever you hear this song. This is one powerful instant mood lifter, oh man. The pace seems to be picking up, along with the energy, and we quickly meet the Tin-Man, played by Ne-Yo, yes, that Ne-Yo. He sounds incredible, singing his big song “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, oh I’m sorry, that’s “Slide Some Oil To Me”. Same same. It has a super chill not-at-all-awkward chorus that goes “so slide some oil to me, girl, and we can lubricate my miiiind”. Totally normal. Anyway, Ne-Yo is some great casting. I really like this version of the Tin Man compared to the Wizard of Oz. It’s much closer to his backstory in “Wicked”, having the bad witch turn him into a Tin Man and leaving him heartless, saying if she couldn’t have his heart, no one could. And also, Ne-Yo is legit fabulous in this role.
We get a quick “Ease on Down” reprise before Mr. David Alan Grier pops out roaring as the Cowardly Lion, looking to sell some happy dust to Audra McDonald if only Dr. Jesus will help him out while singing “I’m a Mean Ole Lion”. He’s pretty great, complaining about failed therapy and what not. I love it. And he looks wonderful. It’s hard to get a lion costume down, but the costumes for this show are so far wonderful. Except Dorothy’s. And now another “Ease on Down” reprise!
Then ‘The Wiz’ gets hella dark and kind of close to a line that shouldn’t be crossed – the wicked witch’s monkeys, or other evil spirits, or some terrible dark force, conjure up the image of Dorothy’s deceased mother, to have her/it lure Dorothy into almost giving up the silver slippers, because how can this young kid realize that it’s not the mother she wishes more than anything to see again and that it’s just the most evil thing possible? Damn. Luckily the Tin Man stops her from giving the slipper and then they fight some red-eyed cyclops flying monkeys who can dance and fall so gracefully. Then Dorothy sings a song to the Lion just like Em sang to her at the beginning. “Be A Lion” sounds like a really difficult song to sing, and it doesn’t really have a worthwhile pay off until DAG joins in at the end.
AND THEN COME THE POPPIES! It’s like remembrance day in England all over again! The poppy set was super beautiful; I love how they produced this scene. Another red 100 emoji for you guys. I started to get super nervous about the Lion being all pervy to the flowers but then he showed he was impervious (WORDPLAY) to the poppies and tied them up.
And then all of a sudden they were in the Emerald City! Common as the Bouncer to Emerald City, which is apparently just a cool night club, was kind of painful, and I love Common. Like more than Serena did. Luckily, Dot mentioned how she killed one of the wicked witches and has her slippers, so Common lets them into the Capital for a dance party before the reaping, so it seems. After they do some weird new version of the robot, we meet the Wiz! It’s Latifah! She sings a song that is way too low for her. Why wouldn’t they have changed the key? In every big production, a man played the Wiz, but it actually sounds like they didn’t transpose the song for Latifs. Why on earth would that be the case? SO FING DUMB.
Harvey gives Ne-Yo some amazing lines in this interaction with the Wiz: “Whatchu looking for, a can opener?” Ne-Yo: “Ohh you clever! You scary as hell, but you clever!” I love it! It’s followed by a really lame Spice Girls reference. Oh Harvey.
But then Ne-Yo sings “What Would I Do if I Could Feel” and saves the moment by bringing the house down. How amazing would he be as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”??? Make it so! In the London production! It could happen.
Latifah made some more awkward acting things, Dorothy said a forced line about her squad (#ohharvey), and then the star foursome of Dorothy and her three wise men sang a showstopping rendition of “We Got It’, which with just a little more choreography on their part would be ready for the Broadway revival. Speaking of, I really hope these four are in it.
The high energy and production value continued as we finally meet Evillene, the Wicked Witch we knew as green but is now freaking R&B royalty, dressed from the closet of Regina on Once Upon A Time, with those huge skirts over interesting pants. Did people in the fairy tale times really wear such things? If you are going to wear a skirt, it’s so you don’t have to wear pants, right? So why if you are going to wear a cool skirt would you ALSO wear pants? What’s the damn point? It’s like if you get up early for school but then find out it’s a snow day and you DON’T go back to sleep! What’s wrong with you! We don’t get snow in London.
Mary J. Blige’s Evillene is amazing, oh my goodness. Can she do anything wrong? She gets one bum line accusing her funnyman henchman of being ‘an Eddie Murphy or something’? because he’s funny? #ohharvey. But then she gets some great lines proving that Dorothy kind of sucks, in the “Wicked” perspective at least. Like, she stole Evillene’s sister’s shoes…after she KILLED her. Wicked witch allowed to be mad about that, and those facts do make Dorothy seem like the wicked one. But apparently Evillene’s talk about throwing shade made Dorothy upset that she missed the latest podcast while in Oz so she picked up her mopping bucket and threw the dirty water on the witch to melt her, because water can kill. (We learned that in fifth grade. It was a riddle my teacher gave us: What is necessary for life but can also kill you. Fifth grade. Riddle. In school. Not weird.) So Dorothy laments ‘Oh no, I did it again”, which is weird because that’s WHY she went to Evillene’s lair in the first place, under the Wiz’s orders, to kill Evillene. Did she forget her mission? Never forget the mission Dot! An even stranger reaction is that Evillene’s indentured servants slowly start stripping as soon as they realize their master is gone. Like, no verbal reaction, just slow stripping. We see that underneath their super-cool goth-punk dark pink and black robes are yellow booty shorts, happier clothes that they weren’t allowed to wear, and only when they are free of the dark clothes can their moods match the joy of the yellow clothes. Or something. “Everybody Rejoice/Brand New Day” is joyous and fun, and the foursome sound wonderful, like they know they made it through the brunt of the show and can relax. Ensemble members get a few solo sung lines, which is nice. Hi Capathia!
Big running question: Why do they have Dorothy in a too short miniskirt this whole time? She’s like 13 in the show, right? Every number that requires her to dance shows her underwear, which is weird for a 13 year old.
Another awkward as ass Common scene! And then another awkward Latifah scene when they pull back the curtain and find that she’s a fraud and a WOMAN! I didn’t think that was a secret? They did call her ‘sir’ a lot when they first met her but I didn’t think anything of it. But there are some dumb lines when Ne-Yo’s like “oh she’s a woman!” and Dorothy’s like “and WHAT’S wrong with that? nothing. You have no manners” which is just like unnecessary here. Also it reminds me of what Sarah Silverman said about little girls: don’t tell little girls they can be whatever they want because that is what puts the idea in their head that someone says they can’t.
Anyway, they convince the Wiz to go back home to Omaha, which didn’t take a lot of effort considering they were like, ‘you can eat at Modern Love’, so she’s like yeah aight let’s bounce. Queenie lets down her hair and looks f-ing amazing in her final number “Y’all Got It”, and she also sounds a lot better. She gets in the hot air balloon and calls for Dorothy to join her, and in the original Wizard of Oz, Dot is too busy hugging her friends and tripping on her own feet and stuff and misses the flight in an oh shoot oh no manner. I love that here, Dorothy decides that going to Omaha is not right for her. Granted, she could have GONE to Omaha with the Wiz and then caught the freaking bus back to Auntie Em…because Omaha is closer to Kansas than a freaking OTHER REALM is, but she is only 13 and so her brain is only halfway developed. Her heart was in the right place, I guess. Kids are dumb.
But luckily Glinda arrives! We haven’t met Glinda yet and it’s almost over. Luckily Uzo Aduba is worth waiting for, because her Glinda has a touch of Crazy Eyes in her and it’s a great combination. Her song “Believe In Yourself” has some strong moments, a few rough patches, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was watching Crazy Eyes all dressed up and I never got to see her in “Godspell”. Uzoooo!
Finally/finale, we realize that Shanice Williams was saving everything she had for her big number, which so unfairly (to the star) is the finale of “The Wiz”. Aside from “Ease on Down the Road”, “Home” is the most recognizable song from the show, if not more so, considering Stephanie Mills released it as a single and Diana Ross sang it on the movie soundtrack. It’s kind of a big deal. I can’t express how proud I am of this little stranger Shanice for how perfectly she performed her big song. I mean. Watching this show back, she must be completely and totally thrilled with how faultless it was. I hope she’s as proud as everyone in the world is of her. My favorite thing, besides watching a newcomer shining in her big moment, was how everyone in the Broadway community erupted on Twitter proclaiming that the country just witnessed a star being born. I love the camaraderie! Everyone seemed so proud of her! I love it!
Overall, this was such a strong show and definitely the best of the televised live shows thus far. I am going to make an advance bet that it’s also better than Fox’s upcoming “Grease!” live because “Grease” sucks and they should have chosen “Grease 2: Back in the Habit” to do instead. For “The Wiz”, NBC and Neil Meron & Craig Zadan seemed to hear all the criticism of the previous two shows – iron out that camerawork in tech more, and hire actors who can actually do the job, not just Be Famous – and actually worked on fixing those issues. The cast here was hella famous, but they were actually incredible, obviously, because instead of like “oh let’s get Christopher Walken to do impressions of a stick being tossed by a light wind”, they got people famous for being great singers. That is smart. They also went for strong famous actors who have already been tested in musical theatre – Uzo Aduba was on Broadway before “OITNB” came out; David Alan Grier got a Tony nom early in his career, and he was in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, and he was in freaking “Porgy & Bess” with Audra McDonald, FFS; Stephanie Mills, &c. I hope a lot of this cast continues with the upcoming Broadway production, especially Shanice (she deserves it), Elijah Kelley (he needs to break into Broadway and stay there), and DAG. And Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, though they’d probably never do it. And Stephanie Mills, because that would be almost as cool as when Kelli O’Hara someday plays Margaret in “The Light in the Piazza”. Suffice it to say, I am really excited to see who I’m going to see in the stage production. Almost as excited as I am to watch this again right now.
The show itself started with the 3 wise men/Dorothy’s Oz friends/Dorothy’s farmhands in their regular lives before they become the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Not ‘before they are dreamt of as those 3’ but before they become them, because one of my biggest problems with “The Wizard of Oz” is that we’re supposed to believe everything was a dream, which is bullshit. BULL. SHIT. I was very happy to see one of my favorite performers, Elijah Kelley, here as the Scarecrow, because even though we’ve only ever seen him in the newest “Hairspray” movie, that’s enough because a) that movie is perfect (if I were on an iPhone I’d use that red 100 emoji) and b) the year it came out the whole cast premiered songs from it live at ShoWest and I was fangirling at the front of the stage because I was the only non-old-white-old-man in the room so it was like ALL FOR ME and I was like ‘Angelica, ELIJAH!’ that whole time.
Dorothy, played by total newcomer Shanice Williams, begins by being such a teenager all huffy about how this farm isn’t her home and she wants to go home and are you too good for your home, but then Auntie Em, played by Stephanie Mills – as in, Stephanie Mills the original Dorothy in the original “The Wiz” Broadway production! – sings the first song about how like, your parents died in that accident and I hope soon you are back to your normal self because I don’t know how to make you feel better about being an orphan, no one does because that’s f-ing terrible. Starting a show with a ballad instead of a rousing company-wide upbeat number is my Theatre No-no #1, well aside from Not Sucking, because such songs immediately bring energy levels down – so when you are just starting, you’re at level 0 energy, and then it brings you into negatives, and most of America doesn’t get how negatives even work because public education is in shambles, so it’s just not the best way to begin. However, Mills is pretty great considering it’s a super-cold open and she’s a ledge. But then things get going with the COOLEST FREAKING TORNADO I’ve ever seen. Damn! I think my only point of reference might be ‘Twister’, and the news, but this used some wonderful special effects both in the form of projections and, much cooler, in the form of lots of chorus boys spinning around all crazy like. I very much enjoyed this tornado and hope I am never in a real one.
The camera starts to go fuzzayyyy and then it focuses on Dorothy, her broke ass house, and shiny towers of Oz!! Wheee! Munchkins come out and they are wearing adorable costumes and are NOT midgets being exploited! Huzzah! They’re acting all serious and adorable and mad about how the house killed someone wearing silver heels hella difficult to walk in (maybe that’s what killed her), but then they’re like NO WE’RE SO HAPPY YOU KILLED A STRANGER LET’S HAVE A PARTY INSTEAD OF EXPLAINING IT ADEQUATELY TO YOU SO YOU AREN’T SCARRED FOR LIFE! and then freaking Amber Riley, wasted for years on “Glee” until we almost forgot what a talent she really is, comes out and shouts “Hey girl, I’m Glinda, oh wait just kidding, I’m ‘Addaperle, the feel-good girl’; there’s another good witch in this version named Glinda, she’s really cool too.” I CAN’T WAIT!
We hear some dumb lines in this updated book by Harvey Fierstein, whom I absolutely adoooore, but he wasn’t the right choice for this show. I mean. Old Jewish white boy, traditionally black and urban hip hop musical….There’s a bleh line about having sushi for lunch and something else I immediately put out of mind, and then Amber lets loose on “He’s the Wiz” and it’s pretty amazing, stupid Ryan Murphy kept her on lockdown for so many years. She does a sort of “And I Am Telling You” ending to a whatever song, with Shanice getting her first sung lines, well a few ‘ahh’s. Sounded great! Why has Dorothy still not had a song??!!
Yay here she goes! For Shanice’s first song, “Soon as I Get Home”, she needed a minute or two to shake out the nerves, but she proved how impressive she is. Great job! It’s still a super R&B slow-jam song though. And yes, this show is famously R&B, but so far it’s all the same kind of sound. We need something more energetic to cut all these power ballads!
We cut to that unfairly incredible commercial with Taraji, Kerry, and Mary J., and I’m like, damn, why am I not cooking and dancing with those ladies rn? What do I have to do to be in that commercial with them but in real life?
We come back to the show and see, on the scarecrow’s pole, that weird and scary guy Cillian Murphy played in “Batman Begins” with that burlap sack mask. Or it’s Elijah Kelley wearing that same weird and scary mask, covering up his pretty little face. He’s surrounded by really scary mean crow-men, who he says have been filling his head with all manner of nonsense. I think the crows represent the republican presidential candidates and OMG, I’m right, they just began the ‘Crow Commandments’, really called “You Can’t Win”, but I like my title better. It’s such a fun, upbeat (yay finally!) song considering how dire the message is – you can’t win, you can’t get out of the game, you are screwed forever, just give up. It must be hard to sing in your best voice when there is a pole stuck up your butt and you’re just hanging there with no breath support, but he does a decent job. I know there’s better from him to come though. His spoken lines are hilarious with his fast timing: “Do you know what?” “I know nothing!”
HERE WE GO! Next comes the most famous song of the whole ‘70s, “Ease on Down the Road”. I dare you, no, I double dog triple cat dare you, not to sing along whenever you hear this song. This is one powerful instant mood lifter, oh man. The pace seems to be picking up, along with the energy, and we quickly meet the Tin-Man, played by Ne-Yo, yes, that Ne-Yo. He sounds incredible, singing his big song “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, oh I’m sorry, that’s “Slide Some Oil To Me”. Same same. It has a super chill not-at-all-awkward chorus that goes “so slide some oil to me, girl, and we can lubricate my miiiind”. Totally normal. Anyway, Ne-Yo is some great casting. I really like this version of the Tin Man compared to the Wizard of Oz. It’s much closer to his backstory in “Wicked”, having the bad witch turn him into a Tin Man and leaving him heartless, saying if she couldn’t have his heart, no one could. And also, Ne-Yo is legit fabulous in this role.
We get a quick “Ease on Down” reprise before Mr. David Alan Grier pops out roaring as the Cowardly Lion, looking to sell some happy dust to Audra McDonald if only Dr. Jesus will help him out while singing “I’m a Mean Ole Lion”. He’s pretty great, complaining about failed therapy and what not. I love it. And he looks wonderful. It’s hard to get a lion costume down, but the costumes for this show are so far wonderful. Except Dorothy’s. And now another “Ease on Down” reprise!
Then ‘The Wiz’ gets hella dark and kind of close to a line that shouldn’t be crossed – the wicked witch’s monkeys, or other evil spirits, or some terrible dark force, conjure up the image of Dorothy’s deceased mother, to have her/it lure Dorothy into almost giving up the silver slippers, because how can this young kid realize that it’s not the mother she wishes more than anything to see again and that it’s just the most evil thing possible? Damn. Luckily the Tin Man stops her from giving the slipper and then they fight some red-eyed cyclops flying monkeys who can dance and fall so gracefully. Then Dorothy sings a song to the Lion just like Em sang to her at the beginning. “Be A Lion” sounds like a really difficult song to sing, and it doesn’t really have a worthwhile pay off until DAG joins in at the end.
AND THEN COME THE POPPIES! It’s like remembrance day in England all over again! The poppy set was super beautiful; I love how they produced this scene. Another red 100 emoji for you guys. I started to get super nervous about the Lion being all pervy to the flowers but then he showed he was impervious (WORDPLAY) to the poppies and tied them up.
And then all of a sudden they were in the Emerald City! Common as the Bouncer to Emerald City, which is apparently just a cool night club, was kind of painful, and I love Common. Like more than Serena did. Luckily, Dot mentioned how she killed one of the wicked witches and has her slippers, so Common lets them into the Capital for a dance party before the reaping, so it seems. After they do some weird new version of the robot, we meet the Wiz! It’s Latifah! She sings a song that is way too low for her. Why wouldn’t they have changed the key? In every big production, a man played the Wiz, but it actually sounds like they didn’t transpose the song for Latifs. Why on earth would that be the case? SO FING DUMB.
Harvey gives Ne-Yo some amazing lines in this interaction with the Wiz: “Whatchu looking for, a can opener?” Ne-Yo: “Ohh you clever! You scary as hell, but you clever!” I love it! It’s followed by a really lame Spice Girls reference. Oh Harvey.
But then Ne-Yo sings “What Would I Do if I Could Feel” and saves the moment by bringing the house down. How amazing would he be as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”??? Make it so! In the London production! It could happen.
Latifah made some more awkward acting things, Dorothy said a forced line about her squad (#ohharvey), and then the star foursome of Dorothy and her three wise men sang a showstopping rendition of “We Got It’, which with just a little more choreography on their part would be ready for the Broadway revival. Speaking of, I really hope these four are in it.
The high energy and production value continued as we finally meet Evillene, the Wicked Witch we knew as green but is now freaking R&B royalty, dressed from the closet of Regina on Once Upon A Time, with those huge skirts over interesting pants. Did people in the fairy tale times really wear such things? If you are going to wear a skirt, it’s so you don’t have to wear pants, right? So why if you are going to wear a cool skirt would you ALSO wear pants? What’s the damn point? It’s like if you get up early for school but then find out it’s a snow day and you DON’T go back to sleep! What’s wrong with you! We don’t get snow in London.
Mary J. Blige’s Evillene is amazing, oh my goodness. Can she do anything wrong? She gets one bum line accusing her funnyman henchman of being ‘an Eddie Murphy or something’? because he’s funny? #ohharvey. But then she gets some great lines proving that Dorothy kind of sucks, in the “Wicked” perspective at least. Like, she stole Evillene’s sister’s shoes…after she KILLED her. Wicked witch allowed to be mad about that, and those facts do make Dorothy seem like the wicked one. But apparently Evillene’s talk about throwing shade made Dorothy upset that she missed the latest podcast while in Oz so she picked up her mopping bucket and threw the dirty water on the witch to melt her, because water can kill. (We learned that in fifth grade. It was a riddle my teacher gave us: What is necessary for life but can also kill you. Fifth grade. Riddle. In school. Not weird.) So Dorothy laments ‘Oh no, I did it again”, which is weird because that’s WHY she went to Evillene’s lair in the first place, under the Wiz’s orders, to kill Evillene. Did she forget her mission? Never forget the mission Dot! An even stranger reaction is that Evillene’s indentured servants slowly start stripping as soon as they realize their master is gone. Like, no verbal reaction, just slow stripping. We see that underneath their super-cool goth-punk dark pink and black robes are yellow booty shorts, happier clothes that they weren’t allowed to wear, and only when they are free of the dark clothes can their moods match the joy of the yellow clothes. Or something. “Everybody Rejoice/Brand New Day” is joyous and fun, and the foursome sound wonderful, like they know they made it through the brunt of the show and can relax. Ensemble members get a few solo sung lines, which is nice. Hi Capathia!
Big running question: Why do they have Dorothy in a too short miniskirt this whole time? She’s like 13 in the show, right? Every number that requires her to dance shows her underwear, which is weird for a 13 year old.
Another awkward as ass Common scene! And then another awkward Latifah scene when they pull back the curtain and find that she’s a fraud and a WOMAN! I didn’t think that was a secret? They did call her ‘sir’ a lot when they first met her but I didn’t think anything of it. But there are some dumb lines when Ne-Yo’s like “oh she’s a woman!” and Dorothy’s like “and WHAT’S wrong with that? nothing. You have no manners” which is just like unnecessary here. Also it reminds me of what Sarah Silverman said about little girls: don’t tell little girls they can be whatever they want because that is what puts the idea in their head that someone says they can’t.
Anyway, they convince the Wiz to go back home to Omaha, which didn’t take a lot of effort considering they were like, ‘you can eat at Modern Love’, so she’s like yeah aight let’s bounce. Queenie lets down her hair and looks f-ing amazing in her final number “Y’all Got It”, and she also sounds a lot better. She gets in the hot air balloon and calls for Dorothy to join her, and in the original Wizard of Oz, Dot is too busy hugging her friends and tripping on her own feet and stuff and misses the flight in an oh shoot oh no manner. I love that here, Dorothy decides that going to Omaha is not right for her. Granted, she could have GONE to Omaha with the Wiz and then caught the freaking bus back to Auntie Em…because Omaha is closer to Kansas than a freaking OTHER REALM is, but she is only 13 and so her brain is only halfway developed. Her heart was in the right place, I guess. Kids are dumb.
But luckily Glinda arrives! We haven’t met Glinda yet and it’s almost over. Luckily Uzo Aduba is worth waiting for, because her Glinda has a touch of Crazy Eyes in her and it’s a great combination. Her song “Believe In Yourself” has some strong moments, a few rough patches, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was watching Crazy Eyes all dressed up and I never got to see her in “Godspell”. Uzoooo!
Finally/finale, we realize that Shanice Williams was saving everything she had for her big number, which so unfairly (to the star) is the finale of “The Wiz”. Aside from “Ease on Down the Road”, “Home” is the most recognizable song from the show, if not more so, considering Stephanie Mills released it as a single and Diana Ross sang it on the movie soundtrack. It’s kind of a big deal. I can’t express how proud I am of this little stranger Shanice for how perfectly she performed her big song. I mean. Watching this show back, she must be completely and totally thrilled with how faultless it was. I hope she’s as proud as everyone in the world is of her. My favorite thing, besides watching a newcomer shining in her big moment, was how everyone in the Broadway community erupted on Twitter proclaiming that the country just witnessed a star being born. I love the camaraderie! Everyone seemed so proud of her! I love it!
Overall, this was such a strong show and definitely the best of the televised live shows thus far. I am going to make an advance bet that it’s also better than Fox’s upcoming “Grease!” live because “Grease” sucks and they should have chosen “Grease 2: Back in the Habit” to do instead. For “The Wiz”, NBC and Neil Meron & Craig Zadan seemed to hear all the criticism of the previous two shows – iron out that camerawork in tech more, and hire actors who can actually do the job, not just Be Famous – and actually worked on fixing those issues. The cast here was hella famous, but they were actually incredible, obviously, because instead of like “oh let’s get Christopher Walken to do impressions of a stick being tossed by a light wind”, they got people famous for being great singers. That is smart. They also went for strong famous actors who have already been tested in musical theatre – Uzo Aduba was on Broadway before “OITNB” came out; David Alan Grier got a Tony nom early in his career, and he was in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, and he was in freaking “Porgy & Bess” with Audra McDonald, FFS; Stephanie Mills, &c. I hope a lot of this cast continues with the upcoming Broadway production, especially Shanice (she deserves it), Elijah Kelley (he needs to break into Broadway and stay there), and DAG. And Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, though they’d probably never do it. And Stephanie Mills, because that would be almost as cool as when Kelli O’Hara someday plays Margaret in “The Light in the Piazza”. Suffice it to say, I am really excited to see who I’m going to see in the stage production. Almost as excited as I am to watch this again right now.
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Indecent at the Menier: A Glorious and Wrenching Jewish Triumph
It’s a special Theatre Tuesday! because last week’s Theatre Thursday was actually Yom Kippur so we were offline because as this show teaches you Judaism is important and deserves respect!
I’ve been complaining about how Jewishness is treated on London stages for as long as I can remember, and I know some of you are sick of it. Thankfully for you clowns, this week’s show, the new UK production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, tells its heart-breaking, full-bodied Jewish tale with respect for its subject matter and the people represented. Not that one show solves an endemic problem, but I cried through the whole thing and not just at the sad parts. At the fact that a Jewish story was being treated lovingly, and with actual Jewish people involved, onstage and offstage, (Joey Tribbiani voice:) IN LONDON! This beautiful production of the Tony-winning Broadway hit is nearly two hours long with no intermission — which as you know means I had to pee horribly for half the show (and true to form I got a UTI in post) — and I still loved it. That’s as much love I can send a show, truly.
Indecent treats a narrowly defined and unassuming subject — the lifespan of a Yiddish play from inception through celebration and on to suppression — on an epic scale. Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance is the (real) work, and we see a troupe of actors (well, various troupes, in various plays-within-plays, don’t think about it too hard too too hard) tell the story of Asch’s writing of the play, the first reading of it, the first production, and onto worldwide fame…and then censorship of it on Broadway, of all places. Asch’s play tells of a young Jewish girl whose father runs a brothel, and the girl falls in love with one of the prostitutes, and the girls’ father gets like, so mad. Likewise, people in the real world were equally displeased, Jews and goys alike. Two women in love! Jewish people treated as complicated living breathing beings and not paragons of perfection! The horror!
God of Vengeance was ahead of its time, but luckily a few people believed in it, recognizing its art and beauty and how tenderly it treated the central love story, and they helped make it happen. (Believing in art is necessary!) People like my man Lemmel (Finbar Lynch), a man who was at the very first reading of the play in someone’s living room, and was with it all the way through its Euro tour, to NYC, and back to Europe just in time to perform it in a ghetto attic in hushed tones. Yeah, this play gets to the Holocaust, and you might be like ‘ugh we get it the Holocaust’ but the Holocaust was a really big deal (“remember that we suffered!”)! Going in, I was most excited to see American queen Alexandra Silber and Molly Osbourne (double Tzeitels!) playing various actresses playing the lovers, and they were as great as I expected, but Lemmel was the one who really grabbed our hearts and broke them. His love for God of Vengeance and for the love story in that play is the real heart of this play. Like I thought the love story in GOV might be the central emotional core of Indecent but it’s really Lemmel’s love for the GOV love story that was the real one all along. The real good place was the friends we made along the way. Finbar was so good, and not just because you know how I feel about small old Jewish men (I don’t think he is Jewish but he is now on the official list of goyim who are allowed to play Jews) who make me sad, like Eli Wallach in The Holiday, oh man. So good. Right at those heartstrings.
Several times during the show, I thought hmm maybe this bit isn’t totally necessary, maybe like 10-15 minutes could be cut, like the Berlin cabaret scene that makes you feel like when you watch R-rated movies with your parents. But this is hundo p one of those shows that upon reflection you realize were masterfully set. Rebecca Taichman’s compassionate and thoughtful direction treats the piece so kindly and with such care that that’s its own piece of art. (And I’m not just saying that because I especially enjoyed all the Yiddish projected on the backdrop, proving you can learn from using Duolingo (I was so proud of how much I could read and understand.)) All the moving parts, all the various characters the actors portray prove to be necessary to show GOV’s trajectory as a parallel to the history of Jews during this time period. They’re all the puzzle pieces necessary to put the story of this underlying play together, and you know like not all puzzle pieces are the dogs’ faces but you still need the ones that make the grass and trees and stuff to make it all complete. Yes I have done one puzzle in the past 20 years and it was of a dog. No I don’t enjoy puzzles.
From the Lodz section onwards, my crying was real bad. The audience was so quiet, and I was so nervous that I would do my choking-hiccupping crying loud enough to disrupt the theatre so I had to do the Joey-thinking-about-Chandler thing and distract myself a little bit and the only thing that I could think of (because it was still relevant subject matter, at least) was the Crazy Ex Girlfriend song I quoted above, ‘Remember that we Suffered”, so while I was crying outwardly at Lemmel my dude, in my head I was going “The sweet and the bitter/Remember that we suffered/Streisand and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Spielberg and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Have we mentioned Hitler? I’m just saying that we suffered!” It’s the best song. Anyway. The impact of seeing the words ‘an impossibly long line’ projected again towards the end broke me, absolutely broke me. It was brilliant and powerful writing and also so mean, because I was wearing two masks and it’s really hard to cry with two masks.
I knew from friends who had seen it on Bway that ‘the rain scene’, when you finally get to see what everyone had been talking about the whole time, was the most beautiful and emotional part, but I didn’t even imagine what the context would be. That aspect — who is imagining that scene and why — is something that I will both treasure and be haunted by.
Above all, it was glorious to see (during the high holidays no less) a play about Jewish people and Jewish subject matter actually performed and created by Jewish people. And in London! It’s a 5782 miracle! I hope it’s a sign of permanent change, although the fact that the Guardian review of this play felt it at all appropriate to say ‘hey you know who else is a Jew, Philip Roth!” as a way to shoehorn in yet another message about their view of the Israel conversation (that’s def what they were doing, btw) shows how much work this place still has to do.
But I digress, like the Guardian writer. This play will stick with me, and I’m sure many other audience members, as a paradigm of caring, protected, heartfelt, authentic theatre-making. I’m so grateful that this was well done, so grateful to the people involved for giving Jews one little corner of respite in a year filled with disrespect and other shit.
INFORMATION
Indecent plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory (not a chocolate factory) until November 27. I recommend you get tickets and if you’d like to get me one too I would go again (the NHS loves giving me antibx).
The Menier asks audience members to wear masks, but like every other theatre, it doesn’t have a mandate. So other people don’t have wear one and many won’t, although this crowd was better about it than at any other theatre we’ve been to recently.
Toilets are down the stairs in the restaurant part of the cafe, so if you will have to run at the end, you want to sit near the aisles, because the rows are suuuuper long, all the way across the theatre jawns.
I don’t know if any of the cast are stage-dooring because I didn’t try, because we are in a pandemic.
Mrs. Doubtfire Musical is So Much Better than it has Any Right to Be
The musical adaptation of Mrs. Doubtfire has met a great deal of criticism — for daring to recreate the magic of Robin Williams, for treating the dressing of a man as a woman as a joke — while trying to be a commercial success during the hardest time Broadway has ever faced. Seemingly shrugging all of that weight off its shoulders, this show works to provide a forking great time. It may not be high art destined to become a classic or have a score I’d listen to on repeat, but it’s much better than expected and was by far the most fun we had in the theatre on our recent trip to NYC (yes, even more fun than Tony Yazbeck’s Cary Grant singing about being an enormous rocketship penis while on acid (I think that was trying to be somewhat serious, so)). Thanks to its well-paced and entertaining book, its clever modernization of key scenes, and above all a masterful performance from Rob McClure, Mrs. Doubtfire is so much better than we expected.
And yes, expectations tend to be low when someone is tasked with stepping into the shoes of Robin Williams in a part as legendary as this. The only way around that is to go in a somewhat different direction. And while the heart of the character is still there, Rob McClure’s version is different enough to sidestep direct comparisons so the resulting response is overwhelmingly positive. His Daniel seems younger and fresher, more chaotic and manic (hard to imagine yes), more fun-loving even than Robin’s, who showed at least some underlying seriousness from the start. Rob’s interpretation is well-suited to the exuberance that musical theatre can produce. He is an incredible performer who clearly gives himself fully to every second of performance, in a way that must be exhausting but he never shows it.
So his take on Daniel is slightly different, but without other changes, including to the other characters and the story deets, it would be another Pretty Woman fiasco, which no one wants. Luckily, there are interesting and well-made changes throughout, not enough to bother anyone who wanted to see what they know, but enough to distinguish it from the movie and give it a reason to exist. The best character updates were to the characters of Daniel’s brother Frank, his boyfriend, and Daniel’s social worker Mrs. Sellner, and the best modernizations were to the cooking scene and the raptor rap. Frank, played in the movie by Harvey Fierstein, is another performance that simply cannot be copied, especially when the original guy is a Broadway guy and so should not be copied because then you’d be like why didn’t they just hire him, he’s like a block away. Luckily. Brad Oscar has taken the role and, as he always does, made it hysterical. Here, Frank’s big thing is that when he lies, he yells. Given how much his brother’s situation forces him to lie throughout the show, this problem becomes forking hilarious. It was by far one of my favorite bits. His boyfriend is played by a very fun J. Harrison Ghee, a younger and cooler guy obsessed with divas and Dreamgirls. The scene of all his potential inspirations for the Doubtfire disguise is well done (forking Maggie Thatcher lol), and it was pretty funny to realize two Princess Dianas were on Broadway stages at the same time (rip Diana the Musical).
For Mrs. Sellner, the transition to musical theatre from the movie version of her drab, serious social worker could have been a clunker. But by casting Charity Angel Dawson, a motherforking BELTER, they enhanced the role by giving Daniel a nightmare sequence about his upcoming court date, in which Charity, well, belted up a storm in a hellscape. Such a good way to let her sing in a way that didn’t break her character.
As for modernizing the almost-30-year-old film (I KNOW), a super clever bit was in reworking the famous scene where Daniel tries to cook for the first time, and burns his boobs. Yeah, the boobs still burn (how do they do!), but the scene cleverly has him watching various YouTube videos from online chefs, which of course the wonderfully game ensemble acts out. Such a great move that provided amazing humor. As for the boring old man’s TV show + the raptor rap (which I can do on request if you want, should I get a Patreon for this very purpose), we see more of the dreadful show, and the raptor rap scene is changed to have Daniel using a loop machine left on the set. He creates the most incredible looping beats and rhythms and sings 100 parts over it in a moment of absolute genius, giving Rob his best moment in a show full of him having star-making moments.
The joke-filled book keeps the pace at a nice clip, with enough of the famous quotes (“it was a run-by fruiting!”) to placate the masses and enough new bits (“pecs and guns and geese better scurry”, my fave) to lift it above copied and pasted dreck like, well, Pretty Woman. (Although for my taste they should have nixed one or two more quotes from the movie (like Miranda’s “the whole time? the whole time? the whole time??” which no one can deliver like Sally Field and then if they could deliver it like her, it would be an annoying copy) but that’s coming from someone who knows the movie by heart.) Although Jenn Gambatese tries her best, and her best is greatness, the character of Miranda comes across as just as much of a wet blanket here, even though she seems even more justified than in the movie. It’s a nice move to make Miranda a fashion designer instead of an architect (and they have fun playing with that in Act II), and she gets an even younger hot love interest (whose weight-lifting scene seemed unnecessary until Rob’s physical comedy with the weights he couldn’t lift, literally the funniest part of the show), but being the straight man can be a thankless role. (Actually, the actual funniest part of the entire show is when the lights lifted at intermission and my husband said “wow I can’t believe they got Amy Klobuchar to do this show.” omg.)
Aside from Rob, the cast highlight by a mile is Analise Scarpaci’s Lydia, who is pitch-perfect throughout. She has a way to make the big emotions of musical theatre seem completely natural. Unlike…I hate to say this…but the worst part of the show — little Natalie. I KNOW IT’S SO MEAN TO SPEAK ILL OF THIS CHILD BUT SHE WAS VERY BAD. Every time she spoke it was unbelievably grating and I almost screamed several times “SOMEONE PUT A SOCK IN THAT CHILD’S MOUTH.” None of Mara Wilson’s sweetness, just all grate grate grate. Honestly this is a direction fault – who told her to deliver every single word like she was imitating SNL characters imitating Borscht Belt comedians.
As for the elephant in the room, I think they handled the fact that the premise is a man dressing as a woman well. Andre, Frank’s boyfriend, dismisses the idea that what Daniel is doing is anything like what trans people do, and rightly so – it’s not. To suggest that this cis man dressing up in a disguise is in any way related to trans people living honestly in the opposite of disguise seems offensive. And, just as with Tootsie, the cis man’s donning such a disguise is shown as patently wrong. Obviously I am not the authority here, but it seemed like a satisfactory way to comment without getting dragged down into something that would only put the two concepts on equal footing, when they aren’t.
INFORMATION
Mrs. Doubtfire plays the Stephen Sondheim theatre, which makes me giggle because, like, he def didn’t write this.
The show is currently on hiatus to account for covidtastrophes and should be back on March 14.
I have never seen ANYTHING theatrical managed as smoothly as the vaccine-proof checking was for this show. As everyone lined up outside to enter, various staff members walked down the line to check proof of vaccination, so it was done super quickly and not just at the door, adding zero waiting time while out in the cold. They stamped the hand of everyone once checked (with the most adorable stamp, of the Doubtfire silhouette) so that to actually enter the building you just flashed your stamped hand. Having the staff go through the line and not just do this at the entrance made all the difference; it’s so simple and straightforward to do it this way but you’d be surprised (I am continually surprised) at how stupidly other venues do it. Broadway I wuv you.
