"The Essential Vegan Travel Guide" & Interview with the Author, The Vegan Word!by Randi / June 30, 2016
One time, in this screenwriting competition I entered, the judges said my characters were flames (that means good) but that there wasn’t really a plot driving their actions forward. If I could, I would go back in time and say to them, well, invariably white dudes, listen, August Wilson did it, so…
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a play from 1982, not a new play as I must admit I thought because I never heard of it before it won the Olivier for Best Revival of a Play this year. That’s the Oliviers (West End), not the Tonys (Broadway), so just keep that in mind. (Actually it won the Tony for Best Play when it premiered!) And this is a good production, with some powerful performances and an excellent set, but goodness, I did not feel the material working. There is no plot. Nothing really happens, and yet so much feels about to happen that it’s almost disappointing.
Ma Rainey was the mother (get it, ma) of the blues, an incredible musical talent and mentor to other queens like Bessie Smith. In fact, my previous exposure to her was mostly due to Mo’Nique in the movie “Bessie” with Queen Latifah. She was so good, Latifs. They both were! I would have loved if the movie showed more of Ma and her relationship with Bessie, so I was so excited for a play that was all about her. Her life seemed beyond compelling. I was pumped!
I was also so psyched to hear her sing a lot, as I assumed she would. I mean, I knew it wasn’t produced as a musical, it was a play, but so was “Lady Day” and that was all music (2 hours with Billie Holiday – you’re gonna want it to be mostly music!). I figured it was technically a play because, while full of music, it wasn’t music that advanced the plot or composed part of the plot, as musicals are defined. (For laymen: “Pitch Perfect”, for example, isn’t a ‘musical’ despite being very musical, because the characters actively know they are singing and it’s not like they are living in song or singing their feelings instead of talking them. The music isn’t the plot.)
Well, surprise, Ma Rainey isn’t even that kind of play.
It’s mostly Ma’s band, four musicians with differing viewpoints on life and race, talking in the rehearsal room before Ma arrives to record a session, and then talking after Ma leaves the session. Ma is a featured character, if that. I’m sure if you know this in advance, you’re good to go, but I didn’t, so this was incredibly disappointing. Ma sang for about 20 seconds and it was RG because she was played by the great Sharon D. Clarke, but then it was all talk and no Ma.
So what is it about, this revered play from the esteemed August Wilson? It’s Chicago in the 1920s and the band is being taken advantage of by the white producers, of course, and arguing about race and their experience as black men at this time. They talk and argue and wait, along with the producers as they wait for Ma. And they wait some more. They’re being held in the basement rehearsal room in the recording studio, which we several parts of in this impressive set.
The four men are Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag (I can’t, best name ever), and Levee. Toledo is wise and cautious. Levee is a live wire who is loud and reckless. He’s obsessed with how he presents himself to the world and thinks he’s entitled to a lot more than he gets in life, which is undoubtedly true given both his talent and the fact that he’s a black man, but his abrasive attitude is a turnoff to even the people who could be his friends. While they wait, the men argue about their position in the world, about their struggles and how to get on, while Levee shows off his new white shoes that he bought. He also gives some new songs he wrote to the white producers and is sure they are going to buy them. We hear really upsetting stories from all the men, especially Levee’s personal background is enough to make you feel sympathetic for anyone. Everything they say reinforces how unjust and unfair society was and still is. Their commentary on race is compelling and provocative – it just doesn’t make for the most gripping plot.
When Ma comes really late, she sings a tiny bit, and pisses off the white producers because of how late everything is and because she demands that her stuttering nephew do the intro to the title song, which takes a while, and everyone gets pissed off, and then Ma leaves. The entire part that was advertised was the tiniest part of the show. Sharon was really good too. Darn.
After the session, the men retreat to their basement cave and argue more. Why aren’t they going home? (It’s unclear that they are waiting to be paid, which I just looked up.) They finished the session. I was confused! And one of them was fired! I was like past Bunuel asking questions of future Bunuel’s art in “Midnight in Paris’ – “why don’t they just leave?” Somehow the little micro (or not so micro) aggressions build and build to a point that you can’t believe it reaches.
The play, depending on how it’s performed, can build to this climax in a way where even though it is a shock, it’s not a surprise that something catastrophic happened like this. But in this production, it was so unexpected and didn’t feel earned. Not like ooh that’s an intriguing surprise, more like, that’s action from a different play entirely. How it was directed and acted, no matter how good the individual parts were, it didn’t feel like they had a cohesive goal. I honestly don’t know what the play was trying to achieve. The tone was all over the place. Amid the harrowing stories, there would be this air of levity in the direction of the show, almost treating it like a comedy, and I couldn’t tell what it wanted to be.
Also, I get that most people probably are more familiar with this show, but I found the advertising misleading. The main show art is of Ma at a microphone. If you saw that, what would you think the show was about? Same as I did, right? I should have done research but most people don’t. Not since the advertising campaign for “The Scottsboro Boys” in London have I found marketing materials to be so misleading. Nonetheless, I have to applaud the acting across the board and the production values. A lot of the men’s long talks were provocative and challenging, and it really does say genuinely important things about injustice and race. As monologues, they are effective, but as a play it is stagnant.
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Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus is as Wacky and Gory as You’d Expect
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, playing at Broadway’s Booth Theatre.
If you’re familiar with artist and playwright Taylor Mac, you’d know before going into one of his shows that it’ll be unique, to say the least. But you don’t even need to know Mac’s provocative past works (like his A 24-Decade History of Popular Music) to know that something billing itself as a sequel to Shakespeare’s most violent, disgustingly gory play, Titus Andronicus, will be eeeeenteresting. And gory. And weird af. And it is!
But Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, starring the great Nathan Lane, is more than just fart jokes and blood (although there’s a lot of scatological humor, which is the fancy way of saying you see a lot of actual, um, emptying of intestines. Of corpses). As you’d expect from Mac, Gary also manages to say some noble things about class, injustice, and modern society. It’s just simultaneously squirting blood out of stabbed necks and accidentally ingesting corpse feces.
As you may know, Titus Andronicus (not to be confused with the superior Titus – Andromedon) is a revenge tragedy, in which the bloodthirsty Roman general kills the Queen of the Goths’ son for killing all his sons (not to be confused with All My Sons) and then the Goth Queen has her other sons rape Titus’s daughter AND CUT OFF HER HANDS, so then Titus kills those sons and bakes them into a pie and serves it to the Goth Queen…and this isn’t even all of it. It’s beyond gory and disturbing, and there’s a huuuge body count by the end. You really only need to know this last bit going into Gary, in which Mac asks the question, at the end of this epic, insane massacre, who cleans it all up?
And his answer, for our amusement, is Gary. In Titus, there’s an unnamed clown who is sent off to be hanged. Mac has saved him from the hanging and called him Gary, played by the great Nathan Lane as no one else could play this character. By volunteering for cleanup, Gary escapes death and gets a promotion, what a big day for him, to maid. With the help of the equally-anachronistically-named maid Janice (Kristine Nielsen), the two of them attempt to sort through the massive pile of corpses, emptying their intestines of all gases and substances for reasons unconvincing for the work required, honestly. While they work, they wax philosophically – in iambic pentameter most of the time – about privilege, class, and politics. And feces.
They also meet Carol (Julie White), the former midwife bleeding out various wounds in her neck, who is dealing with the turmoil and guilt of not having done enough to save her former charge, which all sounds quite depressing but like I said, she’s bleeding out her neck and she’s Julie White, so it’s rather hilarious. One of the most remarkable details of this play is that Julie White, cast so perfectly, wasn’t supposed to be in it: absolute ledge Andrea Martin was originally playing Janice, and Kristine Nielsen was Carol. But Martin was injured days before previews began and had to leave the show, bumping Nielsen up to the lead role of Janice and bringing White in as a last minute addition. For this extreme change, everyone involved deserves kudos for making it work.
Although all three actors (mostly the women) try too hard too often to milk all the obvious humor from their characters, to the point where sometimes they go too far and it becomes unfunny, they succeed often enough to make it an amusing, enjoyable show, even though because it is so insane I have no idea whether I actually recommend it, or who exactly I would recommend it to.
Some of the philosophical statements the comic trio share are striking and powerful, especially when they are relevant to the current political crises (and especially when they are in rhyming couplets, I mean damn). The setup overall, with the help left with the responsibility of cleaning up the mess of the rich and powerful, already says a lot about power structures and who pays the greatest price. But amid Gary’s attempt to create a new genre, a ‘fooling’, to better express his political views, and amid Janice’s continued efforts to drain all the corpses, the play somewhat loses its focus. While trying to provide political commentary and outright humor, it somehow manages to deny a little too much of both.
INFORMATION
Gary is playing at the Booth Theatre until August 4.
“How to Succeed” in London: Make An Old Show Absolutely Ridiculously Hysterical
“How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” is one of those old Broadway musicals from just after the Golden Age (1961) that I always forget I like. Fun fact: I saw Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway in the 2011 revival of “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” (a ‘Birdman’ long title which I will from here on out refer to as H2$) TWICE. I mean I liked Harry Potter fine but I wasn’t a fangirl of Big D until this show. I really can’t believe I saw it twice lol. He was GREAT. That’s not important right now. Funner fact: When Husband learned that the venue around the corner from our flat was doing a small production of H2$, of course we went, considering it is around the corner from our flat, but I completely forgot that I knew the show and that I kind of loved it and that I had seen it enough times for me to memorize pretty much all the lyrics. I just thought, hey sounds fun, I like seeing theatre and we should support the smaller productions in London too. All I remembered really was that there was some hefty ‘60s-era misogyny that we should take with a grain of salt because of when it was written, or as I explained to my friend who came along, “It’s really sexist but in kind of a lovely way.”
We walked the ten seconds to Wilton’s Music Hall and the show began and I literally slapped myself in the face with the metaphorical hand of memory and was like OH YEAH I LOVE THIS SHOW. Wilton’s production is obviously smaller than the Broadway one (and I could move my chair! like on Alitalia), with less exciting dancing, but what’s there is hilarious and so well done. They successfully mine the book and score for every single sarcastic, cutting drop of humor that I think it’s the funniest production of H2$ I’ve seen. I laughed so hard throughout, especially at every slight movement Matthew Whitby made. It was an extraordinarily self-aware production, like they realized the material was sexist and lily white and stuff and so presented it as mocking itself a little. I think a lot of this is in the original book anyway – you can’t have a song called “A Secretary is Not a Toy” (omg I accidentally typed Tory first hahaha I hope none of your secretaries are Tories (I hope none of you are Tories) (please don’t let them win)) and not have the sardonic bite built into the actual show – but I never really noticed it until this production. And I never knew it won the Pulitzer Prize, and sexist things can’t win prizes (or positions of power?) so of course it had to be tongue-in-cheek right?
So what is the actual show about? As I explained to Husband beforehand, “It’s like this guy, and he like charms his way up a company ladder, and it’s like ocean colors?” I remembered that from the 2011 set, what can I say. Also apparently I say like a lot in real life. So what is it really about now that my brain is working? J. Pierrepont Finch, a charming young man who works as a window washer, realizes ‘hey, I can’t be a window washer with this name, not that there’s anything wrong with being one, but my name was clearly made to be attached to a man of great stature at a Fortune 500 company, otherwise what a waste, also it would help matters along if I were British because who else has a name like that, but I can’t change that now, so we’ll try to get a corporate job and because I’m American I’ll just go by Ponty because Americans could never abide a first-initial-legit-ridiculous-middle-name combo on anyone but S. Epatha.’ Okay that’s my thought process not his, but the gist is there. (Oh my god I never until now wondered what the J is for. Any guesses??) Ponty wants a big time corporate job like most white men do (and how!) so he goes into the office building for the World Wide Wickets Company (hilarious made-up business that has the side effect of reminding you of the bar exam (so many widgets/wickets questions)) and just straight up starts charming people into a job and up the ladder consistently and swiftly. It’s a good lesson that it doesn’t matter what your skills are as long as people like you.
As Finch (I can’t say Ponty too much or my stomach starts to hurt), Marc Pickering played the character differently from both Radcliffe and Matthew Broderick (back when he was appealing onstage and not a wooden statue but I digress). His Finch was a smooth charmer of course, but in a much subtler way, and with a more devious, scheming vibe. Finch is always scheming, but other portrayals have had him be a little more cheerful and pleased when his scheming pays off, like in every single scene when he gets promoted over someone else or orchestrates someone else’s firing because of something he knew or did. Others’ reactions have been like ‘cheeky smile – ah ha!’ Marc was more like ‘side eye half smile- YEAH BITCH I DID THAT YOU DARE MESS??’. He was charming but also aloof. And a little scary. It all worked. He looked just like a young Pee Wee Herman who could also have been a Newsie when he was little and I don’t mean that at all in a mean way.
The show starts with Ponty weasling his way into an entry-level position by alluding to the head of HR that he knows the boss. That’s a really good real-world tip. The opening number “How To Succeed” with those weird intervals sounded a lot nicer than I remembered, so bravo. In the five seconds it takes for Finch to land this job, a secretary named Rosemary falls for him because why not/’60s and sings the song I had been singing in jest to my husband the whole week prior, “Happy To Keep His Dinner Warm”. My god I still can’t get over how funny it is that there is a song called this, literally about how a lady would be content to make her husband’s dinner and then keep it warm when he works late. It’s amazing. If you take it with a grain of salt. Hannah Grover’s Rosemary is lovely and manages to get to through the song without breaking and screaming about how we have to topple the patriarchy, as I would have done. More impressively, her mic was having a fit throughout her big song, which is such a shame (that I hope the tech people have sorted by now), but she didn’t even flinch, whereas I would have probably screamed ‘WTF IS GOING ON’ and ruined everyone’s night, so brava.
As usual, the comic song “Coffee Break” goes on way too long, as all jokey songs/jokey anythings tend to, but the choreography was pretty funny. Luckily, before I could worry, it leads into my favorite song that, again, I completely forgot was in this show, “The Company Way”. Finch, in the mailroom, gets to know the head of the mailroom (Richard Emerson, who plays all the older man parts aside from the boss and is hilarious in all of them), who describes how he has lasted this long in the company by always playing it safe and toeing the company line. It’s a delightful, catchy song that I haven’t been able to get out of my head all week, and the delivery of all Emerson’s little lines was spot on. I love this scene. We also meet our villain, as all adorable preppy blond boys are, Bud Frump, the boss JB Biggley’s nephew who uses nepotism to try to advance his career. Okay, I know you are rolling your eyes – Frump? F-ing BIGGLEY? But take a deep breath because I’m about to blow your mind. These character names were not made up for this production in response to the current ruin of America. These are the real names from the original 1961 production. I KNOW!!! I think 90% of the audience, tittering when they heard these names like I am tittering at the word tittering, thought they were added for this. See musical theatre is always relevant!
As Bud Frump, Daniel Graham is wonderfully exasperating and annoying as he is supposed to be, and it’s almost hard to hate such a cute person in such cool glasses (he looked exactly like Christopher Hanke to me, from the 2011 revival). It was extra hard to remember that the names were not changed for this production when Bud continuously whines about how he should get what he wants because his uncle is the boss and who cares if he’s qualified if he wants something. So on point. As for the other fair-haired adoraboys in the cast, I don’t even remember Mr Bratt in the H2$ Bway revival but the aforementioned Matthew Whitby f-ing SLAYED me. How he managed he make such a nothing character into the funniest performance ever boggles my mind. He did a lot of amazing side glances and had hysterical comic timing. But more than that, it was his footwork. He seemed to be in a ballet that the rest of the cast didn’t always know about, step-ball-changing and pirouetting around the stage. I was dying. We all were. When he came in to do a scene change dressed as a maid for no good reason, my god. Whose idea was this? So ridiculous and so funny. All the choreography was great, actually. There were no really big booming dance numbers, but all the movement had a clear purpose and was very effective. And so much of it was really funny. I would not be surprised if the choreographer was really a comedian.
Despite the first act being over an hour and a half long (I KNOW), it pretty much flew by with very few low points. I think the pacing could surely be improved a great deal (I do not remember any other production being this long) but there’s not much that’s noticeable. The song at the end of Act I “Rosemary” is too long for being literally just her name repeated ad infinitum, but that’s more OG problems. The scenes with Biggley (Andrew Wadsworth) and Hedy La Rue (Lizzii Hills why are there two i’s I’m genuinely curious) kind of dragged but that’s because those are two kind of thankless characters. I know everyone familiar with this show is aghast at what I just said and shouting ‘but they’re literally 2 of the like 4 main characters’ and I know but still, there’s not the ones we root for. They did a fine job of course and were enjoyable. But you spend the whole show actively rooting for Finch to trick Biggley at every turn, so it’s not like you invest in him or his own story (and the only thing that’s really his own is his affair with Hedy). And Hedy’s whole thing is that she prances about being an attractive bimbo who knows every man wants her, and so unless you are Tammy Blanchard waddling hysterically around the stage and making killer faces, it is a little thankless. Lliizzii did however manage to make us cry with laughter in her first scene, when she apologizes because “it was I whom was late”. Died. And Biggley’s big goofy number with Finch where they sing the Old Ivy fight song was hilarious too. Okay fine they were all great. The whole cast was. Geri Allen was an adorable Smitty. I always lose it when Smitty comes in during “Paris Original”, and Geri nailed how funny that moment should be. Maisey Bawden as Miss Jones was good too, although it seemed like she wasn’t miked at the end and it was hard for her big verse in “Brotherhood of Man” to be as show-stopping as I could tell up front that it could have been. And Nuwan Hugh Perera, who we last saw in the supes creepy “Side Show”, was solid all-around until the end when he was like shimmying in a corner of the stage and we were DYING. So f-ing funny. God everyone in this cast was hilarious and made this show so much fun. We were all seriously in stitches the entire time. That’s so rare and awesome.
And the score! How could I have forgotten how much fun this score is? Why was the song about keeping dinner warm the only one that stuck before? I so love “The Company Way” like I said, but every song is special in its own way. “A Secretary Is Not A Toy” I mean COME ON. I wonder if they know about this song over at Fox News. Someone should send them a recording. And I love “I Believe in You”, when Finch gears himself up for his big meeting and the rest of the company men dream of taking him down. This song was staged in the men’s bathroom, which is a preposterous and amazing idea. Finch is singing to himself in the mirror and using the urinal and stuff and then the rest of the men are watching him and also using the urinals like at least 4 times and singing about how they’re gonna stop him coooold and you’re like how do you already have to pee again you should see a doctor! So good. And nothing gets you as pumped up as “Brotherhood of Man”, even if you are a woman. It’s set up nicely in the scene, with all the company men coming to a face-off about who to blame for the problems Finch has caused. Emerson was hysterical here doing a crazy heavy ‘New York’ accent as the chairman of the board who also used to be a window washer. When he said ‘window washer’ it sounded like he had cotton in his mouth and we were crying. He really sounded just like my South Philly Italian uncle. So good. Finch gets out of the jam by pointing out their shared humanity – being men – which is so dumb and perfect. “Brotherhood of Man” is a joyous, satisfyingly big number that you can’t help but smile throughout. I can’t wait to sing it to my baby nephew when I teach him the responsibility of his white male privilege and all the perks he can look forward to, as the song teaches us.
Honestly, my expectations for this production were seriously low. I knew nothing about this production and thought it was going to be some tiny nothing at the nearby jazz hall. That it was so sublime and kept all of us grinning wildly for 3 hours is something I never would have predicted and am really grateful for. SO MUCH FUN. It ends its short run Saturday so if you are in London you should absolutely see it. Compared to the West End, tickets are cheap, yet the quality of the production is so high. It’s a guaranteed good time so you should definitely go and then I dare you not to sing all the songs all day long.
