Tony Toni Tone: It’s the Day of the Tony Awards!

It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, playing at the Young Vic until April 6.

I love going into shows blind, knowing as little as possible about the plot or even what type of show it is. With Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, I have never been so surprised by a show’s subject matter. Even though the play is from 2000, I managed to miss it the first time-round (‘twas a child) and so with that intriguing title, my brain assumed it was about trains, and probably Jesus. It is not about trains, though it is sort of about Jesus, or religion in general. What Jesus, A Train! (best fake title) really is about is the horrors of the United States prison system, a subject that needs to be spoken about more and in harsher words. This play, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, definitely understands the need to denounce the broken system, but the result is more like a set of speeches than a play.

That’s great for actors preparing for auditions, since the monologues in this show are often powerful and seem important, perfect for showing off out of context. But it’s not great for a cohesive drama, with a plot, with a dramatic purpose. It’s two hours of monologues. Even the ‘dialogue’ between characters is, if you look closely, really a monologue followed by a one word response, lather rinse repeat. With this composing the show, you see that Guirgis had a lot of important things to say, a lot a lot, but without fitting these thoughts into a structured drama, it’s unclear what he’s actually saying.

As for the thin narrative, it’s about a young man who is imprisoned for shooting a despised cult leader, an act of violence that by all accounts is warranted, but vigilante justice isn’t rewarded when the perpetrator is a man of color. Following the imprisonment and trials of this young man, Angel Cruz, we see – no, we are told – how broken the American justice system is, how awful prison is, how unhinged prison guards are. This is all true, if not novel. But then Angel’s plight isn’t simply due to the system; it’s due to his shitty lawyer, Mary Jane Hanrahan, who shows off several times how bad a lawyer she is, with her most egregious, to me, mistake being her failure to share an offered plea deal with her client (I mean, literally gtfo). She also instructs him to lie without mincing her words, as you normally do, such that Angel breaks down in court and incriminates her and gets her disbarred. Which she deserves, sure, but why didn’t he get a mistrial? Why didn’t the court grant him another lawyer and trial? Why does Mary Jane also have SO. MANY. MONOLOGUES? The b.s. of the Mary Jane business was distractingly annoying.

So Angel is in Rikers with an amiable prisoner played by Oberon KA Adjepong. Oberon, as I’ll refer to him because I can’t remember the character’s name and there’s no way in hell it’s better than Oberon, is terrifying yet charismatic, the mark of a true serial killer – which, it turns out, he is! Oberon is hell-bent on saving Angel’s soul by getting him to find Jesus, as he himself has during his incarceration, and the two convicts have long, long-winded monologue-fights about what it means to seek forgiveness, what it means to find god, why it’s important. There are some nice thoughts bandied about in these scenes, but overall, the content is unfocused and unconvincing. Lucius (ah that’s his name! not as good as Oberon!) WAS A SERIAL KILLER. I don’t care how much you pray to god, you don’t deserve forgiveness. You joke still about how you killed more than eight people but they only caught you for eight, ha ha, and how some of them were white so they don’t count, ha ha, and you want to convince us that you deserve any semblance of forgiveness? Give me a g-d break! Are we supposed to connect with his rants about forgiveness and religion? Are they supposed to make us go, ‘hm that really makes you think’? Because instead, his monologues successfully make you agree that he deserved to die in prison. I guess all the Jesus talk could have been an interesting comparison between the lunatic killer’s belief that he’s going to be saved versus the kinder, gentler convict’s refusal to think that way, but what comes across is mere proselytizing that doesn’t land. Oberon was a captivating performer, save for the several moments he got tongue-tied, but with endless monologues to memorize, that’s forgivable, unlike the character he’s playing.

One of the worst, WORST, trends in London theatre this past year, is on full parade at Jesus, A Train. The Young Vic and director Kate Hewitt have decided to deafen, and annoy, its patrons by marking scene changes with a BANG! And I mean a loud forking BANG! I don’t know who decided this was the cool way to change scenes in London recently, but hear me now, fools: it is not. It doesn’t jar the audience in a thoughtful way, if that’s what you were going for; it doesn’t demarcate the difference between drama and reality, if that’s what you were going for; it doesn’t remind the audience of all the world’s troubles in a visceral way, if that’s what you were going for. All it does is forking PISS US OFF. It doesn’t help that that other favorite trend of London theatre is also in full use here: nonstop smoking. This isn’t the ‘50s, guys; it doesn’t do much to define a character to have him smoking the entire play. It’s just silly.

The bright spot is Ukweli Roach as Angel Cruz, who I would have sworn was American. Ukweli captures that difficult role of being a tough young man capable of, well, killing, who also is incredibly sympathetic. Unlike for Lucius, you do feel that Angel deserves better than he got, which is a huge feat considering how little the actor actually gets to play with. Guirgis has created such defined characters, but he doesn’t use them to their fullest potential to convey whatever it is he’s actually trying to say.

INFORMATION
Jesus, A Train! is playing at London’s Young Vic until April 6. It is two hours, with a 15-minute intermission, which is the best kind of show structure. If you go, bring ear plugs and a face mask. It is in the round, another overused, under-considered ploy of this year. 

It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Old Stock at Wilton’s Music Hall until Saturday.

Man alive what an amazing month of theatre it’s been! Last week I was blown away by the one-woman show Shida, and I felt rejuvenated in my love of musical theatre and its ability to tell stories on a superhuman level. Well it happened again literally five days later, when I saw Old Stock at Wilton’s Music Hall. I didn’t expect this one-act musical to crush my soul and break my heart and make me laugh hysterically and then cry hysterically, but it did, and I cannot recommend enough that you race to Tower Hill to see it in the next few days. RACE.

Okay, maybe I would have expected it if I knew at all going in what it was about, but as usual we heard “at Wilton’s” and said “we’ll be there” without needing another word. It’s about immigrants, specifically Jewish immigrants to Canada about 100 years ago and the trials they faced…so yeah, we should have been ready for our EYES TO DROWN but that’s all in the past now. And we all wish we could say the hardships, bigotry, and turmoil these immigrants portrayed faced is all in the past too, but the beauty, the heart-breaking beauty of this staggering work, is that the story describes the plight of immigrants today just as powerfully as it does those of the past. Like the pinnacle of Jewish musical theatre, Fiddler on the Roof, Old Stock tells an important Jewish story that really can be adopted by any minority group, anyone who has ever been ostracized or persecuted, with just as much power and meaning. That’s the beauty of musical theatre, its ability to transcend demographics and time and specifics and speak right to the human heart. And that’s especially the beauty and power of superb musical theatre like this.

The show, by Ben Caplan, Hannah Moscovitch, and her husband Christian Barry (who also directs), tells of Chaya (Mary Fay Coady) and Chaim (Eric Da Costa), two Jewish refugees from Old Country who meet en route to the safe harbors, so they hope, of Canada. I mean sure people will still be racist but they’ll be polite about it. And sure they’ll be told they aren’t real Canadians, not ‘old stock’ (drink!), but at least they’ll have health care AM I RIGHT. They fall in love, one first then the other, and navigate their past trauma, their uncertain place in a new country, and their open future. All the while, a wild, fantastic troubadour in the form of Caplan’s narrator called The Wanderer takes us through the story with a score that explodes with emotion, with wit, with wildness and disobedience as much as it exudes tenderness, thoughtfulness, and real invention. You clutch your stomach laughing early on and then by the second half you’re wondering when exactly you starting weeping, all the while immersed in a storytelling that I cannot commend enough.

Da Costa’s open, vulnerable, joyous face instantly wins you over, as Chaim should. With Chaya’s more reserved nature, Coady has a harder job of winning you over in spite of herself, and they are both flawless. If they are the heart, Caplan is the lifeblood of the production. He’s like if Harold Zidler and Cabaret’s Emcee played together in an acid trip in Dr Frank-n-Furter’s mind but with real grit and heart. It’s a wild and crazy explosion of a performance…and then it’s reverent and quietly gorgeous, in an instant. His impressive ability to shift between raucousness and emotional truth, between booming anarchist anthems and Yiddish folk songs and then sweet lullabies, is a precise and powerful instrument, and a rare one at that.

The fact that Caplan wrote these songs, these incredible songs that play with genre and emotional beats in a magnificent way, and has that versatile, booming, unstoppable voice is one of those things where you’re like ‘god, ffs, that’s not fair to give all that to one person.’ Like when I went to law school with an actual model – was not cool. The score’s versatility – while still seeming generally cohesive – reminded me of the best of Dave Malloy’s work, weaving in and out of genres yet retaining a true voice and always holding firm to emotional truth. And that emotional truth is what rings out even more than the superb score and the flawless performances, a message that despite being ostensibly about a story from 100 years ago is as relevant today as ever.

INFORMATION

The show is just under an hour and a half and you’re going to savor every single minute. I LOVE EFFICIENT SHOWS THAT CAN’T BE EDITED ANY FURTHER. Info leaflets with all the good info a programme would have are free, and there are CDs (HIGH RECOMMEND) on sale for 20 pounds (WORTH IT) as well as Caplan’s other albums. The night we saw the show, the entire cast + crew + Barry held a post-show Q&A that was wonderful. They all have impressive insight into their characters and the role the show plays in telling the story of today’s immigrants as well, which obviously shone through the work. Did I say you should go? You should go. Man that post-show reveal of where Chaya and Chaim’s bloodline led to I CANNOT.

Seating at Wilton’s is in single rows (no breaks) in the stalls, with the house right aisle the one closest to the exit/bathrooms. Upstairs there is a ring I think 2-3 rows deep. Ladies are downstairs, mens are upstairs.

Tickets are available on TodayTix if you are after a good deal, although this show is worth more than I’ve paid for a lot of West End drivel.