"Grease" Live! Renews Faith in the Fox Network If Not The Whole Worldby Randi / February 4, 2016
Several nights ago, a horrible excuse for a sack of meat, let alone a human, won a presidential primary thanks to extreme racist beliefs. He supports banning all people with a certain religious and ethnic background from entering the USA, and thinks we should register and track those already in the country. He, and every other leading Republican, thinks it’s okay to have a ‘total and complete ban’ on millions of people. And, he said he might have supported Japanese internment camps during World War II, obviously, because it fits well with everything else he supports.
The most disturbing part is how many people agree with him, with prejudice too strong to be countered with reason and humanity. Or maybe they forget or never even were told about the horror of Japanese internment. They probably don’t know that someone we all love grew up in one of the camps: George Takei. Aghast that the lessons our country was supposed to have learned from this have been forgotten, Takei gathered a few of his talented friends and helped inspire the new musical “Allegiance”, which ends its Broadway run on Sunday.
It’s a shame that it’s closing, but that speaks more to how business goes in the winter for shows that aren’t behemoths more than the show’s quality. Plus, it’s upsetting as hell to spend time with the issues concerned. Many tourists don’t want to spend their one Broadway show slot crying their eyes out, and others would rather turn a blind eye to our past horrors. I saw “Allegiance” just for Takei and costar Lea Salonga, the superb and the beloved, but had low expectations after reading a few online reviews bemoaning the lackluster score.
While it’s true that the score might not add new standards to the cabaret circuit, it didn’t matter. It was basic but solid, with pleasant melodies and good lyrics. As a whole, everything worked and I didn’t roll my eyes violently even once, which is a rare thing with new musicals nowadays. (“Bend It Like Beckham” almost rendered me blind. I can’t even talk about it.) More importantly, this show was one of the most moving and heartbreaking I’ve ever seen. Although a completely different vibe from “Spring Awakening”, it reminded me of it, with its similar theme of how ignorance and refusing to treat others with humanity can destroy generations.
“Allegiance” is inspired by Takei’s own experience in the camps, which repeatedly acts like a gut punch, when you realize not only did this happen to hundreds of thousands of people, but to someone you feel like you know, someone who is standing right in front of you. I wonder how republicans would feel if they saw this. I mean it shouldn’t take knowing certain people personally or being able to point to them to make you see them as human, but as we learned from all the republicans who only came around to accepting gays as people when it was their own relative &c., a lot of people have trouble empathizing unless they’re forced to in that way. A lot of people are terrible!
The show begins with Takei as elderly Sam Kimura, WWII veteran, putting on his uniform to commemorate Pearl Harbor Day. He’s interrupted by a woman informing him that his older sister, Kei, has died. This woman, the executor of Kei’s will, has a package for Sam, who starts cursing the heavens and his long-estranged sister, angry that she couldn’t just leave him in peace. Uh, damn son! What happened to make you so mad at your sister and so wounded? Let’s find out!
After this present-day prologue, the core of the show starts, with young Sam (played by Telly Leung) and Kei (Lea Salonga) as young adults just before the war really hits America. They are Japanese Americans, born in the USA after their father Tatsuo (Christopheren Nomura) and now-deceased mother immigrated. The family, along with grandfather Ojii-san (played by Takei) who was born in Japan and speaks little English, lives in California where they own and run a successful farm. Tatsuo is hard on his son, and Sammy thinks his father’s disappointment and unreachable standards stem from his mother having died during childbirth. Sammy thinks his father blames him.
The family, well liked and respected in their town, soon has its world turned upside down when the USA is attacked at Pearl Harbor and the insane government decides to send everyone in the country with Japanese ancestry to the camps. Despite being born there and/or being legal citizens, the whole family is sent to Heart Mountain camp, with their farm, house, and all property seized, with no reimbursement. It’s awful, to say the least. Military personnel with power issues are running things at the camp. There’s no clean water, no medicine, no privacy, and no freedom. Sure the writers took some dramatic liberties elaborating on reality, but still, even without the embellishments it’s still a mfing hellish internment camp.
Sammy is a young idealist who refuses to complain about or fight against his circumstances, who wants desperately to be a standup, respectable American, and a model Japanese-American man. But this drive to please his country’s government means he betrays his family’s and his people’s dignity. Instead of exercising civil disobedience or active insubordination with other inmates like his sister’s new boyfriend Frank, Sammy not only obeys but tries to get everyone else to conform as well, thinking that it’s for their own good in the long run. He makes friends with the head of the Japanese American Citizens League, Masaoka (Greg Watanabe), the ineffectual official who doesn’t fight hard enough, or at all, to stop the internment. Sammy helps him by identifying disloyal citizens, like Frank, who refuses to cooperate and refuses to join the army, burning his draft card. To be fair, it seems like a pretty dick move to draft people who you threw in internment camps, so we can’t fault Frank at all. But Sammy does, big time.
Despite being so troublesome in this regard, Sammy is pretty likeable due to Telly Leung’s portrayal. Telly, who can rival Jonathan Groff with how much he spits while singing, shows you that Sammy is not a traitor to any group but is trying to figure out the right path to take in a time when nothing was done right. He’s young, he’s naïve, and he’s trying to do the best he can by people who will never agree. While in the camp, he falls in love with the white nurse on campus, Hannah, played by Katie Rose Clarke. I heavily disliked her in ‘The Light in the Piazza’ when she took over for Kelli O’Hara, but that role is nigh impossible to nail down properly. Here, Katie is extremely likeable and well used.
Spoilies for my memory: Before all that goes down, Sammy joins the army and becomes a poster child for the government’s propaganda campaign on how successful the camps are and how some Japanese can be exemplary Americans. He promised nurse Hannah that he would come back to marry her – who would have thought he’d survive and she wouldn’t. His father, meanwhile, refuses to answer a bogus loyalty questionnaire in the manner the government wants, and is sent to prison. Kei gets preggers by Frank and they get married. Ojii-san, Takei’s wonderfully stereotypically grandfather character, full of wisdom and optimism, dies in the garden that he somehow managed to grow in their desolate mountain camp. It’s all pretty depressing stuff, one right after the other, all while Sammy is deep in the trenches with no idea.
Oh the audience is legit sobbing during all of this. I started crying as soon as I saw Lea Salonga like 5 feet in front of me (front row rush seats what what) and did not stop. Lea’s Kei gets the greatest song in the show, “Higher”, which is reprised several times. She sings about how as a little girl, she lived carefree, playing on her swingset with her mother. Then after her mother’s death, Kei had to be mother to Sammy and forget about being a child herself, but she loved her brother so much that she didn’t care. She helped him to always swing and fly and dream ‘higher’ to the detriment of her own growth, and she now decides to maybe start living her life more like she did before. It’s her “Ima get mine” song, pretty much, but beautiful and touching.
Meanwhile, Sammy is becoming a huge media star, this poster child for the war and all the decisions the government made, and he ends up on the cover of Life magazine. Tatsuo, in that horrible prison where he’s treated abominably, is released by the government just because of his son’s work. Although we were led to think Tatsuo was always disappointed in his son, he was just a tough old man but loved his son. He’s so proud of his soldier son even though they disagree, and he was overjoyed to see him on the magazine cover.
But when Sammy returns, everything has changed. The camps have been emptied, and he finds that his sister has her own family. When Sammy sees, after being through war, that his sister married the man he hates for refusing to defend America and that his father has accepted Frank into the family, he storms off – for good. That was the last time he saw any of them. The rift we heard about in the prologue has been that long, like 60 years. Insanity.
We cut back to present day, and old-man Sam (Takei) opens the package the executor left him. It’s that copy of Life magazine with him on the cover that his father and then his sister saved and cherished for all those years because they always loved him and were proud of him. So this is when everyone in the audience – EVERYONE – started sobbing if they hadn’t already been. Most people were like me and were just crying the whole time. But at this point the stragglers joined in.
Sam goes to Kei’s funeral to pay his respects and get some sort of closure. Afterwards, the executor walks over to him to see how he is. They share a few words before she mentions her mother – Kei. This is Hannah, Kei’s daughter whom Sammy met just once when she was a baby. They named her after Sammy’s nurse girlfriend, after she died saving Frank’s life. I mean. It may seem overwrought but it all worked so magnificently. Oh this is when the whole audience continued crying but much more violently and breathlessly, more like wailing. It was rough. And amazing. I’ve never been a part of an audience that was so emotionally invested and it was really special.
Also really special? Being that close to George Takei and Lea Salonga, George we know and love because of his real life persona post-Star Trek. Lea is a theatre goddess, after originating the role of Kim in “Miss Saigon” when she was just 18, in 1989. She also played Eponine in Les Miserables on Broadway so she just dies in every single f-ing show she’s in. Can we maybe get a show for Lea where she lives at the end? Anyway, her voice was spellbinding then and she is similarly captivating and wonderful here. She rightly gets the best songs, including the heartbreaking “Higher” and the show’s anthem “Gaman”, which is a Buddhist word meaning patience, perseverance, and ‘enduring the seemingly unbearable with dignity’. Like I said, the score isn’t life-changing but it is satisfying and moving, and these two songs alone make a case for it.
“Allegiance” won’t win any awards and will close far from recouping, but it’s a lovely show that is so heartfelt and powerful. I hope it has a long life with regional productions and maybe most importantly school shows. It’s the kind of show that needs to be performed and seen everywhere. I spoke with Takei after the show about how awful it is that the show’s lessons are so relevant today, when we should know better. He was the best person ever at stage door, by the way, and talked for a while about how he hopes the country will make good decisions and stop putting blatant racists in power. My words; George was much more eloquent and kind than I could ever hope to be. I hope for all of our sakes that the message this show shares so beautifully is shared, and embraced.
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City of Angels at the Garrick: Nearly Superb Production of a Nearly Great Show
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is City of Angels, playing at London’s Garrick Theatre after a transfer from the Donmar Warehouse.
The 1989 musical City of Angels may feel just like a 1940s noir film, but the intrigue and twists are all in cheeky good fun. And the new production in London’s West End is definitely good fun. While the great Cy Coleman’s score is less than great, this well directed, inventive production betters even the less exciting parts. The cast seems to delight in Larry Gelbart’s funny, clever book, and it’s all around a great time – if you have the right seat, in a theatre where at least half the seats are garbage.
City of Angels tells the story of a LA writer named Stine (a fantastic Hadley Fraser my goodness) who is working on the film adaptation of his acclaimed novel. As he writes in real life and deals with a wife he cheats on but it’s NBD and a girl he has affairs with but it’s NBD and a Hollywood producer who’s an ass and it’s a BD, we also see the pages he’s writing come to life, with his characters acting out the plot as Stine works on it (with hilarious effect when he deletes and redoes something). Despite being in his imagination, the characters in his story feel real, and the barrier between real life and fiction break down when Stine interacts with his leading man, Stone (a great Theo James, yes that one, such stage presence, very wow), in the most fun parts of this show.
With this super clever, original premise comes tons of humor and creativity, and this production is probably the best we’ll see of this show. The direction is almost flawless (see below) and everything feels purposeful. I never really call out the lighting in a show, but the lighting design here is everything. Stine’s real Los Angeles life is lit in color, whereas the scenes from his script are mainly in black and white, an effect that was impressive as hell when both worlds would share the stage simultaneously, and extraordinary as Stone and Stine toy with the barrier between them. Those clashes between the two S men play out to pretty much the only big song in the show, “You’re Nothing Without Me”, overused a bit as it closes both acts but when it’s the main theme as well as the only strong song for our leading men – and lets Fraser do his main job in this show, which is belting and holding big final notes to impress you and distract you and it works because man alive he is some shit – you can’t fault that use too much.
And yes, while the clever book mostly delights, the score somewhat pales in comparison. There are some strong songs in addition to the aforementioned, like Stine’s wife’s “It Needs Work”, a clever almost patter sort of song that Rosalie Craig does brilliantly. (Craig only plays characters named Bobbi I guess now, and this underwritten one is as satisfying as the previous. (That sounds like a huge compliment since everyone and their mother loved the famous gender-flipped Company but recall that I did not.)) It shows off her acting ability fantastically, but like a lot of the score (save for Hadley’s big belted notes) it doesn’t allow for showing off vocal ability. The only real chance for that comes from Rebecca Trehearn’s “You Can Always Count on Me”. Accustomed to stealing shows, Trehearn’s performance is a highlight.
But there are also some duds that fail the ‘does-this-need-to-be-a-song-and-if-not-is-it-at-least-worth-it’ test. I don’t even recall the underused Vanessa Williams (yes, that Vanessa Williams) singing, which is odd for someone who famously can sing well, but I know she did. (She also gets a cringeworthy line about ‘saving the best for last’. I cannot imagine that was in the original script, so the addition is so corny. But if it original, I will eat my words – but if it WAS is that why they cast her??? Honestly that would make me love everything about this production even more, that’s some baller move for one stupid joke, and I respect that.) For a character as vibrant as Stine’s producer, Jimmy Powers (a good Jonathan Slinger in a JK Simmons role) really should have stronger songs. And Bobbie’s cabaret sections just seem awkward.
Some of the performances left me cold as well. Nicola Roberts, from the pop group Girls Aloud, is not well suited to her one big song, which sounded like when our Kim McAfee in high school started rehearsal without warming up. And the Angel City 4, the ensemble that kind of narrates sometimes, and acts as a Greek chorus sometimes, and serves as the producer Jimmy Powers’ backup singers sometimes, sounded insanely off key all the times. I was literally making Chrissy-Tiegen-at-the-Globes gif face whenever they sang, which is super rude, but I couldn’t help it because holy wow those were some wrong ass notes! Fortunately, they don’t ruin another strong number, Munoz’s (Marc Elliott’s) fun “All Ya Have to Do is Wait”, although I don’t think there was any Hispanic representation in this show which is bad when there are some real yikesy slurs used.
All my endless raving about how well designed and directed this show is does actually have an end, though, and it’s now: This show is staged for 40% of the audience. The Garrick has notoriously horrible sightlines from too many seats, and pillars blocking the view for many of the rest. Add in a narrower-seeming stalls and stage than most, a mezzanine overhang that seems to start at the stage, and a chaotic wackiness to the seating plan, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That knowledge should make the director and crew more careful with what they are doing, but instead, here, they seemed to go ‘you know what, fuck it, let’s stage everything in that one top stage right corner even when it’s completely unnecessary, just to be dicks about it.’ There is so much happening at that spot that literally no one around us could see, and we had good seats. Given the overhang and sightlines, I am sure no one behind row M could see a good portion of the action, which is bullshit. If you’re lucky enough to be in that 40%, you’re going to have a phenomenal time. Otherwise, your resentment is going to color your experience, which is unfair both to you and this great production.
INFORMATION
For a 7:30 curtain, Act I ended at 9pm and the show ended at 10:28, which is about 15 minutes longer than it should be; there were issues at front of house before starting. Yes I really had to pee.
The Garrick Theatre is another stalls-in-the-basement one, so if you want to be at street level, sit in the circle. Also, the ladies bathrooms for the house left side of the stalls are upstairs anyway.
It is one of the smokiest shows in London right now, which is saying something since creators really love to keep those with respiratory problems and asthma away. Even for a 1940s noir show, smoking added nothing to the ambience they created with lights, performances, costumes, and sets. I am still waiting for someone to defend the use of smoking in the theatre to me.
The show is running until September 5, but the cast is changing several times (names this starry don’t do long runs anymore I guess).
STAGEDOOR
Everyone but Trehearn ran or snuck out a different entrance (as is their right yes but darn). The setup is nonexistent, so expect a mosh pit on the busiest sidewalk in London and a guard who doesn’t receive any information.
The Summer Season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Yes I am aware summer is over, I’m cold.
This past summer we at Ldeezhy had the pleasure of seeing three shows at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, a lovely (and recently refurbished) venue that all tourists and residents of Perthshire, Scotland should visit when they visit the most beautiful part of the UK (hopefully not for long! Not that other places will take that crown, I mean because it won’t be part of the UK anymore, sink that ship yourselves Tories). We started with Noises Off, followed by Little Women, and ended with Private Lives. Some pretty classic shiz up in here! Getting through this backlog of posts y’all!
The PFT is a repertory theatre, with a resident company, so you see the same actors regularly. Rep theatres are so interesting, because someone will be amazing in one show and then completely miscast in another, but I guess it makes sense here because the pool is smaller? It kind of reminds me of high school drama club in that way. Well and also because they’re doing Noises Off, which we all did right! Okay my school is the only one that didn’t but I know yours did. My best friend was the stage manager! So let’s start with that beloved comedy classic!
Noises Off
Noises Off is one of the few shows that I don’t think I can get sick of. We recently saw the latest West End revival in…my god it was 2019, I guess not so recent, JFC. But that was sensational, because a) Matthew Morrison was sitting behind me (THAT’S EXCITING!) and b) it was directed by Jeremy Herrin, who directed the 2016 Broadway revival that cannot scientifically ever be topped, it was 104% perfection even before accounting for Megan Hilty’s performance in a role no one knew could actually be that funny. Having seen Herrin’s precise, flawless direction on the big stages TWICE, I was thus spoiled for civilian work. The PFT’s production was hilarious, tons of fun, but the direction proved a bit sloppy. In that third act, when there’s very little dialogue but tons of chaotic action and stuff falling and people arguing but with their body language only, it needs to be directed and executed precisely so that the audience has a clue what’s going on. It was a bit too messy. If I didn’t know what was going on, I would have been a little mad that it was so unclear. But not actually mad, because even with the wee messiness, it’s impossible not to keep smiling so hard it hurts your damn face through any production of this show. Also this ensem confirmed that possibly my favorite line in all of theatre is “If it wasn’t attached to my neck I’d forget what day it was.” I mean, I’ve heard that line a lot, but I COULD NOT STOP laughing this time. The best! I also adored that there were two little kids up front who could not possibly have understood all the jokes but they were having the time of their lives.
Little Women
I hate to give her even more power over me, but Greta Gerwig has spoiled me for all versions of Little Women that aren’t hers. Her framing of what Jo was probably forced to include in her book vs. what was probably/definitely true of its author is simply too brilliant to ever deviate from again. When Jo all of a sudden finds love that isn’t Laurie, you just KNOW it’s Louisa being like ‘ugh you bastards want her to find a man, here you go, half-assed plot!’ So to see it portrayed straightforwardly feels wrong, and always has, but especially after seeing Saoirse’s wee smirk at us for even thinking for a second that it could have been true for Jo, or Louisa, whatever/whoever/both. But aside from that, this play verzh was very pleasant, though the whole repertory theatre company thing means that some parts were muhmuhmuhmiscast. I’m okay saying that and not feeling mean because the worst cast person in this, so wooden and strange that we were literally like what what what is happening, was good in a different show, so it’s very much not a talent thing. Minor faults in an otherwise fun time. Also shout out for making us realize how f-ing hilarious (unintentionally) some lines are, like when Jo exclaims to fake-professor man about how much ‘boys just love to go around nutting!’ We nudge each other a lot in shows (no talking!) but this might have been the pinnacle.
Private Lives
This was my first time seeing this Noel Coward classic live! What fun what ho! Noel has a cheeky good time with a terrible couple who makes terrible decisions. At the start of the play, the couple isn’t a couple. They have gotten divorced, and they’re each on their honeymoon with new people – and they somehow ended up with hotel rooms next to each other (with balconies, apparently, that don’t have any barrier between them??? security risk security risk! I would have to move hundo p). Their new spouses are nice plot devices, but you know from the get-go that the two terriburs are meant to destroy these new marriages and end up together again, even though they can’t go five minutes without fighting. What a lark! The cast of four? no five! there’s a housekeeper! does a great job of painting terrible people you can’t stand in different ways. The central couple nails the whole shibang, but my favorite performance was that from Nalan Burgess as the terrible man’s new wife for a hot second (I am too tired to go look up names of characters) who does some of the best theatrical over-the-top wailing I’ve ever heard. I was HYSTERICAL, her crying was so good and so big and it kept getting bigger and funnier the longer it went on. Just excellent work. Overall, it was a strong production, possibly the tightest of the 3? I mean Noel Coward is always a good time, it’s not like it’s Pinter.
INFORMATION
The Pitlochry Festival Theatre is an enormous space that I don’t think could ever be filled even if everyone in town during the height of tourist season came, so there’s usually room to move around away from people, which is the greatest thing you could ever ask for when out in public. The theatre went through a recent refurb and it shows, except for the bathrooms which didn’t get the memo, which is a shame but there’s never really a line. The bar has vegan treats (but not ice cream) and little water fountain spouts. All in all a fantastic theatre. Stay tuned for another (actually recent) show coming later this week!
