From Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan: The Hardest Border Crossing Yetby Randi / November 14, 2017
Wooot! It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today we talk about “Oslo” which is now at the Harold Pinter Theatre on London’s West End. I wish I left at intermission.
Remember how mad I got at Birdman? Because it was so artsy fartsy without really saying anything worthwhile and I seemed to be the only person who didn’t think it was Jesus in movie form? It’s absolutely nothing compared to my anger at “Oslo”. I would vote for Birdman right now for this year’s Oscars ffs. At least Birdman had objectively good acting and objectively impressive cinematography. “Oslo” has none of that. It is a mess of terrible writing (terrible!), awful overacting (awful!), and obvious lack of any editing (obvious!). But worst of all, it wastes the opportunity of writing great art based on this subject matter, AND, because it is important subject matter, it seems to have tricked everyone into assuming that it is indeed great art. The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing everyone in theatre that “Oslo” is quality.
Remember how mad I got at Birdman? Because it was so artsy fartsy without really saying anything worthwhile and I seemed to be the only person who didn’t think it was Jesus in movie form? It’s absolutely nothing compared to my anger at “Oslo”. I would vote for Birdman right now for this year’s Oscars ffs. At least Birdman had objectively good acting and objectively impressive cinematography. “Oslo” has none of that. It is a mess of terrible writing (terrible!), awful overacting (awful!), and obvious lack of any editing (obvious!). But worst of all, it wastes the opportunity of writing great art based on this subject matter, AND, because it is important subject matter, it seems to have tricked everyone into assuming that it is indeed great art. The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing everyone in theatre that “Oslo” is quality.
This seriously revered (and mind-bogglingly so) play by J.T. Rogers tells the behind-the-scenes drama of the secret meetings in the development of the Oslo Peace Accords, between representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Pretty important subject matter, right? and rife with dramatic potential. “Oslo” premiered in New York a few years ago, transferred to Broadway, and won the Tony for Best New Play. The importance of the subject matter apparently blinded audiences into thinking the play itself was good, and because they were just like oh this is good I’m having fun, the potential was squandered because no one will ever write a play about this again. This amazingly interesting idea for a play will never get to be fully realized into the strong work it deserves because the shit that was churned out first won the Tony and who on earth is going to write a new version when the old one won a Tony! Grahhhh. We all lose when audiences aren’t critical.
But of course we had no idea that “Oslo” was going to be the theatre equivalent of a chicken in a magician’s hat and everyone including the chicken is like ‘what, no’ when we excitedly bought tickets and when we excitedly went to the theatre and when we excitedly pranced about the lobby before the show started. I had heard such good things and hellooo it won the Tony! How many times am I going to say that, I hear you asking? I get it, it won the Tony! Well I just still can’t believe it. I’ve been against some Tony wins in the past – David Hyde Pierce for “Curtains” over Raul Esparza for “Company”, anyone at all over Rachel Bay Jones for “Pippin” – but those winners were still deserving as hell, they just weren’t my vote. But “Oslo” winning anything but a Razzie is like when Joe Fox’s child-aunt sings “Tomorrow” while his new temporary stepmother makes a pass at him. JUST A LOT OF NO.
Anyway so there we were all hyped up for some Middle East peace process goodness preshow when I realized that the Harold Pinter Theatre in London was CHOCKABLOCK full of every Jew in Europe, squashed into the poorly designed too-small lobby like sardines, which old Jews love. Oh my goodness I don’t think I saw that many Israelis when I was IN Israel. I was happy at first because I like to force a camaraderie with my fellows when Nazis are back in power but then the whole theatre started smelling like Yom Kippur breath and that’s hard to get past.
Still I couldn’t wait to be blown away by the intellect and the intrigue and the excellent writing I expected. The show began, I was so revved up to be smacked in the face with genius…and then the old lady next to me – NEXT TO ME – took out her tote bag, pulled out a plastic bag, and out of that pulled two very tightly wrapped sandwiches with some sort of mayo-based salad, probably chicken given the demographics. So those of you who know me know that I am not only Theatre Police, I’m regular Theatre Police’s worst nightmare. I grab phones out of hands, I get ushers to admonish talkers, I jump out of my seat to tell people to get in line or gtfo. Boorish behavior at the theatre drives me insane. I just want people to not behave like monsters; is that so much to ask? So the fact that this sandwich-eating monster who thinks it’s okay to whip out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and slowly unwrap it and then munch on it IN THE THEATRE was NEXT TO ME was like the universe getting drunk and seeing how crazy they could make me while it watches, cracking up while eating potato chips and laughing to universe friends going ‘LOOK AT ‘ER LOOK AT ‘ER SHE’S GONNA LOSE IT’. That’s how I pictured the universe at this moment. I honestly almost stood up and shouted “oh THIS is the bad place!” If Ted Dansen wanted to torture me for eternity this was the brilliant way to do it. I was frozen for a minute as I just sat horrified that someone was actually doing this not only in the theatre but next to me of all people, before I gathered my wits and whispered ‘omg stop’. She didn’t hear me, of course, what with her loud chewing blocking any sound from entering her ears. A kindred spirit in the row in front of us and a few seats down kept turning around in shock to stare at this brazenly bad behavior, making eye contact with me and we shook our heads in disbelief and disgust together. Friends! I tried again: ‘please put that away’. Old sandwich lady seemed completely shocked that anyone would have a problem with an audience member sitting in the fourth row center of the orchestra, right where the actors look most of the time, proudly eating a chicken salad sandwich in the middle of a drama about the motherfreaking Middle East. She stopped but still, the damage was done. She and her even older husband talked a lot during the show too. “WHAT DID HE SAY?” “HE SAID HE’S TIRED, RIGHT? TIRED.” I mean me too lady.
Amid all the old people conversations and the bursts of Yom Kippur breath hitting us like hot air darts from absolutely nowhere (it was horrid), we tried to focus on the play, and we really tried to love it even a smidgen as much as we had hoped to. It tells the story of two Norwegian diplomats, Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen (obviously their names are properly spelled with some fun Scandinavian alphabet marks that I’m not going to bother to find and add in because this show isn’t worth the effort), who organize secret negotiations between representatives sent by Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yassir Arafat in 1993, keeping their experiment a secret from the rest of the world. Everything could have gone wrong, and a lot did, but the Norwegian couple risked everything to try to get people from both sides to talk to each other as fellow human beings, to find some common ground, and to reach agreements on important issues using Terje’s newfangled methods, which are never explained in the show but apparently work. We meet frumpy Jews, slick Matrix-wannabe Jews, friendly Arabs, scary stoic Arabs, all the various, passionate players in these backdoor dealings, all trying to behave somewhat peaceably and fairly while aiming for a win for their side.
It could have been so moving, so important and dramatic and educational.
Instead, it’s a total shitshow of immature writing, overacting, lack of edits, and stupid jokes aimed at super old uncritical audiences. It sounds so great but the stellar idea had its potential completely destroyed in the execution. It was like The Big Bang Theory of theatre, aimed at the lowest common denominator – incredibly basic and unsophisticated and barely shooting above the baseline but still capable of winning lots of awards (and viewers and money and acclaim). But the difference is that I sometimes laugh at Big Bang, It can be funny despite its uninspired attempts at easy humor (not to mention its sexism and racism). “Oslo” is worse than Big Bang in every way – writing, directing, acting, enjoyment. I know, I can’t believe I’m saying this either, that a Tony-winning play is so much worse than the most insipid show on TV in recent years. But it’s true.
A huge problem with “Oslo”, besides everything I already mentioned, is that despite the subject matter being such a selling point for it, it doesn’t have any faith in it. The writer and everyone in the creative team apparently didn’t believe that it could stand as an important show because they cram it full of the worst jokes you’ve ever heard, I guess to keep the older-skewing audience thinking they’re having fun. When the Israelis were talking about potential representatives to send, one would say “Oh he can’t handle it – he’s from HAIFA!” and the oldest, deafest Jews in the audience would roar with laughter while I sat there just jaw-dropped from disbelief at how bad these would be even for Borscht Belt comedy acts. Or when in the middle of talking about important issues, one guy would make a joke about how he loves gefilte fish and everyone would laugh simply because he said gefilte fish and old Jewish men think that’s the funniest thing to talk about. I cannot. There was also an extended bit when the Norwegian chef of Mona and Terje tell the guests how she makes her waffles. It was tortuous enough to put you off waffles for good, and I love waffles. I thought my husband’s head was going to explode during that part. He didn’t say anything – he knows me; even in the worst of shows you behave – but I could sense the heat coming off the whirring of his brain cells as they tried with all their might to keep the blood in the head.
Aside from the very, very dumb jokes…no, none of it was any better. The negotiation scenes should have been strong, but the writing, oh god it was so weak. You know from reading my travel posts how much I love cursing, right? I do it a lot. I am not shy about it and I appreciate when cursing is used well. This play is the best case I’ve ever seen for outlawing cursing in all forms. It was so frustrating how poorly it used what could be a great tool. How do you ruin that? They would shoehorn the f word into almost every sentence, and it never made sense or sounded good or worked to increase drama. It just sounded stupid. “Let’s get these fucking talks going.” “I only have fucking until six o’clock.” “I’m fucking hungry let’s get the fucking dinner.” These aren’t exact quotes but they are decent examples of how poorly written this show was. How can you be so bad at cursing? And that wasn’t the only tool that was so overused that it became a shivering pile of ash that only hinted at once being metal. The actors shouted 98% of their lines. When everything is shouting, there’s nowhere to build, and so nothing stands out as being dramatic or important. You can’t start at 10 and then have nowhere to build when you are talking about the Middle East. The only result of all the shouting and screaming was that I tuned everything out, which I doubt was the intent.
Even more frustrating and tasteless was how the sole important woman was treated – and that the creators I doubt even realize how it came across. Every single time a man entered the room, they would comment on how great Mona was and how she was such a wonderful woman. Every single time, they would single out her as a the sole woman and point out how they wished she could be their wife. Always in a jovial, friendly manner, always so easygoing as to make most of the audience (and I’m guessing the playwright) assume that this was just men being friendly. But it came across to us, woke af millennials, as so despicably sexist, so demeaning to this woman who was A DIPLOMAT, equal in importance if not more so to her diplomat husband and colleagues, that it makes me fear that every man involved in the creation of this show is indeed a good ol’ boy type of sexist, not even realizing when they are being disgusting to women.
The saddest thing about this show, aside from the fact that the peace talks obviously didn’t really do much, was that it was artless. Theatre is art, and this clumsy, vulgar attempt was so completely devoid of any merit that it made me sad for this great love of mine. Well not completely devoid – Peter Polycarpou, always terrific, is the best part of this production. His acting as Ahmed from the PLO was somehow able to shine past the terrible writing he was given. But that’s really it. I cannot believe my beloved Barlett Sher directed this mess. He really needs to stick to golden age musicals starring Kelli O’Hara. It breaks my art that this show is so bad because it’s the worst kind of badness – the insidious kind, that no one else believes you about. Everyone – LITERALLY everyone else – thinks this show is amazing. The show SHOULD be amazing! I wanted it to be! I guess the silver lining is that we haven’t lost our critical sense yet?
The best part was when we both broke our rules. At the end, they do that awful ‘what happened next to every character?’ bit that is soooo annoying usually but you can give a pass when it’s about real-life people (and in Legally Blonde). But they had all the side characters do their what-I-did-next bits too! That is unnecessary. When one lady who had LITERALLY one line had her turn and said ‘I had a heart attack and I died’ we both suppressed (or tried to at least) guffaws and I kind of whispered ‘good’. This show is so bad it makes me awful. When the raucous applause finally died down, my husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. Husband had the best line we heard the entire night: “Oh that was so bad…oh I’m so unhappy!” And then we cracked up for like 10 minutes as we shook our heads at the rest of the world.
INFORMATION
The play is terrible, but at least it’s overly long!! The first act is an hour and 15 minutes. The second? AN HOUR AND 45 MINUTES. OH THISSS IS THE BAD PLACE!
STAGEDOOR
lol no.
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“Speed-the-Plow” is in the West End with Lindsay Lohan: Cool
“Speed-the-Plow”, the David Mamet play best known for the celebrities attached to its various productions because they’re the only reason to sit through its vacuity, is now on the West End. Remember how a few years ago, Jeremy Piven was set to star on Broadway but he had to bow out due to mercury poisoning because he ate too much sushi? That was this show. And that’s the most interesting thing about it! Now it’s on the West End, starring Lindsay Lohan in her Redemption Tour™ sponsored by Oprah. (Oprah was there opening night, and I didn’t know. I’m so BT about it. Though it’s probably for the best because if I ever met her I’d be like “Ah’s snitting next to Borpo!”)
Lohan not only showed up, but remembered all her lines and, less condescendingly, was actually decent. She was well cast as a young attractive woman who messes with a Hollywood exec’s head because of all her wimmininess, which I’m sure she has done often in her real life but due to her failure circa 2007 to show up to work rather than wimmininess.
“Speed-the-Plow” is about two Hollywood executives who are preparing to pitch a terrible-sounding but sure-to-be-money-making prison film to the studio head. They only have the option until the next morning, which is quite the forced timeline for allowing all sorts of dramatic things to happen. We only have 24 hours to pitch this to the boss! Oh no! He’s going to NYC for the day? Well let’s just meet him tomorrow morning and hope he’s not late, instead of mentioning anything about the film to him on the phone! Idiots.
Bobby is the newly minted head of production, and Charlie is his longtime, long-suffering associate. I say long-suffering because we get the idea that the two friends have been working together for a long, long time, but Bobby is the only one who has been promoted or paid well. So what is that about? Judging this production, I would say it’s because Americans think British people are smarter because of their accent, and Bobby (despite the understudy’s best efforts), is clearly British, so he got the promotions. Charlie, on the other hand, can do a super impressive American accent, so his studio bosses assumed he wasn’t as smart or cultured as Bobby. My blurring of the lines between the actors and their characters seems only fitting given the nonsense of this flimsy play and how much my mind wandered throughout. And indeed, Charlie’s accent was so impressive (especially compared to Bobby’s FAILURE TO SAY HIS R’S) that I almost thought he could be a compatriot. But then I saw his name was Nigel Lindsay. Nope. Not American. Can’t be more British than that. (Nigel was actually quite great in the role. But he acted like and physically resembled Norbert Leo Butz enough that I couldn’t help dreaming of how amazing Norbert probably was in the Broadway revival.)
Lindsay plays Karen, a role – originated on Broadway by Madonna, never forget – that is both thankless and demeaning, but with great shoes. She’s a temporary secretary for Bobby, and we know she is new to the movie business and quite naïve about its operating because she tells everyone she meets how ‘naïve’ she is every five minutes. It’s a super short play, less than 90 minutes, and half the words were Lindsay saying ‘naïve’. The other half was Bobby the Britman saying “entuh-tainment”. (And “unduh-stand”. SAY YOUR R’S. It’s the ONE rule of doing American accents.)
Bobby has been given a book about radiation and the end of the world and humanity and stuff to provide a ‘courtesy read’, which means he will read it to be nice but there’s no way in hell the studio would ever make it as a film. He tells naïve Karen this, and naïve Karen is like, but why? “Because it wouldn’t make money.” But why? “Because no one wants to see a movie about that.” But why? “BECAUSE I SAID SO DO YOU UNDUH-STAND?”
But Karen won’t take no for an answer, so she goes to his house at night, even though he’s gross and old, to discuss the enormous long book that she somehow read in its entirety and tabbed between finishing her work day and dinner time. Karen loved the book, to say the least. She thinks it’s the most brilliant piece of writing that e’er touched her heart and thinks it would somehow make a great movie. This is where Mamet gets both lazy and annoying. Karen reads SO MUCH OF THE BOOK out loud to us in her attempt to convince Bobby of its brilliance. All the parts she reads sound like the Dalai Lama when he is in a drug-induced dream fighting off Ewok-shaped clouds. Then the tables sort of turn, and even though we know Bobby is trying to seduce her, she starts seducing Bobby. It’s gross because Bobby is old and can’t say his r’s. Karen just keeps reading high Dalai Lama passages until Bobby says he’ll make the movie with her and then they doooo it. So gross.
Obviously this play is blargh. The only possible theme or moral you can take from it is that Hollywood values money over boring stories (ooh burn!) and that women ruin everything. David Mamet is like a more jackassery version of Aaron Sorkin, which makes sense because a smart friend of mine (not the internet) told me that Sorkin was inspired by Mamet. But Sorkin is better because at least “The West Wing” had solid female characters that weren’t just wimmins being vagina-havers that bother the men, as all female characters in Mamet works turn out to be because he seems a misogynist at heart. Lindsay’s character here exists only to mess up the bro dynamic between the two male leads, and then when the men realize that she messed with their heads (seemingly not with bad intentions), they dispose of her. OH no they don’t kill her, they just kick her out and say “Try getting another job in Hollywood ever again, missy!” which is maybe worse. Like what jerks.
If anyone can explain to me why this play is called “Speed-the-Plow”, and why hyphens, I will give you a cookie. Is this a famous phrase that other people know about and I just never learned, like wag the dog or get the pip? Don’t know it. (Interestingly, Mamet wrote “Wag the Dog” as well. But that one doesn’t have hyphens! Why not! Why is he messing with our minds?) So, in closing, you should see it. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.
“Speed-the-Plow” is about two Hollywood executives who are preparing to pitch a terrible-sounding but sure-to-be-money-making prison film to the studio head. They only have the option until the next morning, which is quite the forced timeline for allowing all sorts of dramatic things to happen. We only have 24 hours to pitch this to the boss! Oh no! He’s going to NYC for the day? Well let’s just meet him tomorrow morning and hope he’s not late, instead of mentioning anything about the film to him on the phone! Idiots.
Bobby is the newly minted head of production, and Charlie is his longtime, long-suffering associate. I say long-suffering because we get the idea that the two friends have been working together for a long, long time, but Bobby is the only one who has been promoted or paid well. So what is that about? Judging this production, I would say it’s because Americans think British people are smarter because of their accent, and Bobby (despite the understudy’s best efforts), is clearly British, so he got the promotions. Charlie, on the other hand, can do a super impressive American accent, so his studio bosses assumed he wasn’t as smart or cultured as Bobby. My blurring of the lines between the actors and their characters seems only fitting given the nonsense of this flimsy play and how much my mind wandered throughout. And indeed, Charlie’s accent was so impressive (especially compared to Bobby’s FAILURE TO SAY HIS R’S) that I almost thought he could be a compatriot. But then I saw his name was Nigel Lindsay. Nope. Not American. Can’t be more British than that. (Nigel was actually quite great in the role. But he acted like and physically resembled Norbert Leo Butz enough that I couldn’t help dreaming of how amazing Norbert probably was in the Broadway revival.)
Lindsay plays Karen, a role – originated on Broadway by Madonna, never forget – that is both thankless and demeaning, but with great shoes. She’s a temporary secretary for Bobby, and we know she is new to the movie business and quite naïve about its operating because she tells everyone she meets how ‘naïve’ she is every five minutes. It’s a super short play, less than 90 minutes, and half the words were Lindsay saying ‘naïve’. The other half was Bobby the Britman saying “entuh-tainment”. (And “unduh-stand”. SAY YOUR R’S. It’s the ONE rule of doing American accents.)
Bobby has been given a book about radiation and the end of the world and humanity and stuff to provide a ‘courtesy read’, which means he will read it to be nice but there’s no way in hell the studio would ever make it as a film. He tells naïve Karen this, and naïve Karen is like, but why? “Because it wouldn’t make money.” But why? “Because no one wants to see a movie about that.” But why? “BECAUSE I SAID SO DO YOU UNDUH-STAND?”
But Karen won’t take no for an answer, so she goes to his house at night, even though he’s gross and old, to discuss the enormous long book that she somehow read in its entirety and tabbed between finishing her work day and dinner time. Karen loved the book, to say the least. She thinks it’s the most brilliant piece of writing that e’er touched her heart and thinks it would somehow make a great movie. This is where Mamet gets both lazy and annoying. Karen reads SO MUCH OF THE BOOK out loud to us in her attempt to convince Bobby of its brilliance. All the parts she reads sound like the Dalai Lama when he is in a drug-induced dream fighting off Ewok-shaped clouds. Then the tables sort of turn, and even though we know Bobby is trying to seduce her, she starts seducing Bobby. It’s gross because Bobby is old and can’t say his r’s. Karen just keeps reading high Dalai Lama passages until Bobby says he’ll make the movie with her and then they doooo it. So gross.
Obviously this play is blargh. The only possible theme or moral you can take from it is that Hollywood values money over boring stories (ooh burn!) and that women ruin everything. David Mamet is like a more jackassery version of Aaron Sorkin, which makes sense because a smart friend of mine (not the internet) told me that Sorkin was inspired by Mamet. But Sorkin is better because at least “The West Wing” had solid female characters that weren’t just wimmins being vagina-havers that bother the men, as all female characters in Mamet works turn out to be because he seems a misogynist at heart. Lindsay’s character here exists only to mess up the bro dynamic between the two male leads, and then when the men realize that she messed with their heads (seemingly not with bad intentions), they dispose of her. OH no they don’t kill her, they just kick her out and say “Try getting another job in Hollywood ever again, missy!” which is maybe worse. Like what jerks.
If anyone can explain to me why this play is called “Speed-the-Plow”, and why hyphens, I will give you a cookie. Is this a famous phrase that other people know about and I just never learned, like wag the dog or get the pip? Don’t know it. (Interestingly, Mamet wrote “Wag the Dog” as well. But that one doesn’t have hyphens! Why not! Why is he messing with our minds?) So, in closing, you should see it. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.
Touching the Void: Please Don’t Ever Make Me Ice Climb
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Touching the Void, playing at the Duke of Yorks Theatre in London until February 29.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of outer space. Whenever I watch a movie like Gravity, my head is usually in my lap for most of the space parts and while I hyperventilate I’m like ‘please for the love of god never ever make me go into space.’ And now, making me climb a mountain where you need to use ice axes and where as soon as you take a break you get hypothermia sounds so much worse. Do not make me do this.
That I kept my shit together (well enough) during this stress-test-gone-insane of a play to realize how well they were telling this story is a testament to just how well they did it. I feel so lucky to be, I think, one of the very very few people in the audience and maybe in the world who had nooooo idea about this true story before I saw this play. There’s a really famous documentary about the real people who did this climb and what went wrong and I guess ‘everyone’ knows about it and I knew nnnnothing about it even though it won a BAFTA. (Both works are based on a book, and I don’t want to tell you who wrote the book because that’s a spoiler and I don’t futz with spoilers.) I can’t compare the play to the documentary, as a result, but I can say that if you don’t know the story, holy wow are you in for a wild ride. And given the rest of the audience’s reaction, I’m pretty sure it will be just as gripping and impressive if you do know the story. But I am so grateful that I got to experience this thrilling theatre as a blank slate.
In 1985, Joe Simpson (Josh Williams (those are like the same name)) and Simon Yates (Edward Hayter) set out to become the first climbers to reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, a mountain climb so difficult that no one had done it and yet these two bros are like oh but we can do it and we should do the west face because it’s impossible and also we’ll climb the old fashioned way, just the two of us with no team to help us so like YEAH they’re GONNA die. The play begins with a wake post-tragedy, as Joe’s sister Sarah (Fiona Hampton) attempts to understand why her brother felt the need to do crazy bananas shit like this. I was unsure at the beginning of the ability to translate this story to the stage, because the wake start felt rough and struggled to get off on the right foot. (Also, I couldn’t help but feel anger at Joe for putting his sister through this, as well as the family we don’t see, but that’s a whole nother conversation about living your life I guess.) The super loud booming club music pounding through the theatre before showtime (and during the interval, PASS) didn’t help. That interval music is even odder considering the action that comes before it.
But rather quickly, once they started telling the story via flashback, so it seemed, and really once they started climbing (even Sarah’s climb on the chairs), it kicked off and became riveting. With Tom Miller’s direction and incredible physicality from the cast, doubts about this story’s stageworthiness dissipated. Somehow, watching them climb onstage made for truly gripping theatre, thanks to the brilliant set design and climbing choreography. You’d think that the biggest difference between the play and the movie, and where the movie wins out, is the ability to show the actual mountain and their actual climbing. But how they recreate it on an enormous dinosaur skeleton-made-out-of-printer-paper sort of thing is mind-blowing. And sure it’s probably incredible to see all this action on the real mountain in the movie, but what they accomplished onstage is super impressive.
Williams’ physical performance in Act II is even more impressive, and I completely bought that I was watching an injured man trying to move at all. I saw his pain and suffering and it felt real. The cast overall was good, and any weakness I thought I recognized in Hampton in the beginning was just my difficulty with the opening gambit, as in Act II she and everyone really shine, even Richard (Patrick McNamee), the annoying guitar-playing dork, hitting the right notes for needed comic relief.
How the story unfolds is shocking and emotional and exciting and a surefire way to raise your blood pressure, and if you have anxiety you’ll def need to prepare yourself. But I mean all that in the best way. I still can’t believe this is a true story. And I still can’t believe people would choose to do things like this on their own volition. Please do not make me.
INFORMATION
The show is about 2 hours 20 minutes, with the first act ending at our performance at 20:37.
At the Duke of Yorks, I recommend sitting in the circle, because that’s ground level. I forgot and was in the stalls and the whole being below ground thing is no fun when you try to leave. Also, the Ladies bathroom is right next to the house right door of the circle (the same one you climb the stairs to if you’re in the front stalls). For this show especially, you want to make sure you have a clear view all the way up – do not sit in the back of the stalls.
