Nukus, Uzbekistan: I Finally Find Pretzels (And Also Interesting Art)by Randi / January 16, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today we are talking about Glengarry Glen Ross at London’s Playhouse Theatre, which runs until February 3.
I don’t really like David Mamet. Don’t get me wrong, I like him more than I like Pinter, but still, he’s not my cup of playwright tea. (I don’t really like any tea!). But I went to see the new London production of his eminent work “Glengarry Glen Ross” because Christian Slater was in it. I mean also because I like to see all the theatre but mainly because Christian Slater was in it and I thought if I got to meet him then I could be friends with Cher Horowitz in both of their primes. Also he’s a good actor. I am familiar with the movie, and I don’t love it but I understand that it’s important and worthy of others’ adoration. I was skeptical of how such an American play would do with British audiences, but fun fact, “Glengarry Glen Ross” (GGGR) had its world premiere in London! Who knew! (Another fun fact, Mamet dedicated the play to Pinter, because he helped make that OG production happen. What a small world of playwrights I don’t enjoy!)
I don’t really like David Mamet. Don’t get me wrong, I like him more than I like Pinter, but still, he’s not my cup of playwright tea. (I don’t really like any tea!). But I went to see the new London production of his eminent work “Glengarry Glen Ross” because Christian Slater was in it. I mean also because I like to see all the theatre but mainly because Christian Slater was in it and I thought if I got to meet him then I could be friends with Cher Horowitz in both of their primes. Also he’s a good actor. I am familiar with the movie, and I don’t love it but I understand that it’s important and worthy of others’ adoration. I was skeptical of how such an American play would do with British audiences, but fun fact, “Glengarry Glen Ross” (GGGR) had its world premiere in London! Who knew! (Another fun fact, Mamet dedicated the play to Pinter, because he helped make that OG production happen. What a small world of playwrights I don’t enjoy!)
If you haven’t seen the movie or weren’t in NYC in the ‘80s to see the Broadway production (which oddly won the Pulitzer Prize but lost the Tony Award, which happens a lot but still come on that’s like winning the Oscar and not winning the Golden Globe (I know I just compared my fave Tonys to the ridiculous Globes and that is heresy but even I can admit that awards mean nothing (except the Pulitzer, you want to believe that that means something))) (also omg the 1984 Tonys were LUDICROUS; GGGR lost Best Play to Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, which I don’t know too well, but I’m sure it was deserved, but more importantly Ian McKellen was nominated for a show literally called “Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare” which like okay I know I wasn’t born yet but how did I miss that?? and worst part omg Mandy Patinkin lost for Sunday in the Park with George, which Sondheim didn’t win best score for? how is that possible? I know “I Am What I Am” is a seminal wonderful song but so is “Finishing the Hat” and omg “Move On” come onnnn and it lost Best Musical to La Cage Aux Folles too and I don’t know how I feel about that because La Cage is a great show too and it was probably super meaningful at that time to honor a story about gay men and I really could talk about that for a while but I will try to get back on topic), GGGR is about desperate real estate men in Chicago who want so badly to sell shitty real estate to support their meaningless, humdrum lives that they are willing to do terrible things to make it happen. The ones who aren’t willing to burgle and steal are still willing to lie to and cheat buyers and commit all sorts of shenanigans that prove their lack of moral compass. So, none of them are very sympathetic characters, and it’s hard to connect fully when that’s the case, and it’s even harder when it’s yet another story about how hard regular men’s lives are in America I mean I know it’s from the ‘80s but I’m tired of it. Ain’t you tired Miss Hilly?
The play opens with two characters sitting in a Chinese restaurant. The whole first act (an incredibly short 35 minutes, I mean what) takes place in the Chinese restaurant, which really made me want fried tofu but I’m not sure if that was the intention. First we see poor sad sack Shelley Levine (Jack Lemmon in the movie, who really can’t be beat he was the best) begging the office manager John Williamson for better leads (the Glengarry leads) so he can actually make a good sale. He’s older than the other salesmen and past his prime and you do feel a bit bad for him. Williamson, on the other hand, is cold and unfeeling but as played by Kris Marshall, kind of bland instead. You’ll know Kris as the British idiot who went to America to find girls in “Love Actually” and sang ditties about his knob and somehow managed to find hot girls because of his accent. That accent is missing here as he tries to do an American accent, which is fine, but it seemed like all his focus was on the accent instead of acting so he was very stiff and wooden.
The focus on keeping up their fake American accents was apparent with the rest of the British cast too. Scene two of the Chinese restaurant duos featured Dave Moss, the brash and aggressive jerk who plans to rob the office of its best leads and sell them to a competitor. He tries to convince George Aaronow, the least memorable character in this production, to join him, and threatens to incriminate him if he doesn’t. Playing George, Don Warrington was fine but I don’t know if the accent was tripping him up or if he just wasn’t good with stuttered interjections. His character has a lot of repeated words like ‘I – I – I’ that get interrupted, but it was clear he was waiting to be interrupted and that threw everything off kilter a little. It always bothers me when actors don’t have more planned in case their costars wait a half second too long to interrupt. You gotta keep going or else it’s so obvious that the timing is off. I remember in “Once Upon a Mattress”, which we did in middle school and it was horrible because you need more sophisticated actors to make that show not terrible, there’s a line the princess says: “But that’s my huckle—“ and then the queen or something interrupts her. Okay people, it’s clear she’s going to say huckleberry so just make like you’re going to say huckleberry and let her actually interrupt you. Don’t say huckle and then let there be open air. You get what I’m saying. Don didn’t have his berry ready.
So all of this was kind of boring and hard to get into because most of the characters sucked so far, but then in Scene 3, Christian finally shows up, as Ricky Roma, and it’s the first (maybe only?) truly enjoyable, spirited bit of the play. Everyone perked up not just because he’s more electrifying to watch, but because his character is much more fun. An ass, but fun. He’s talking in the restaurant booth to maybe a good friend – you assume from the conversation – and he’s just going on and on about his life and women and sex and it’s kind of wacky but entertaining, and then after this monologue he pauses, and asks his companion what his name is. It’s the one great laugh in the show and it really effectively establishes Roma’s character. Great scene, Mamet.
In Act two, we lose the Chinese restaurant for their burgled office, all grey and mediocre with crap and papers everywhere. A cop is there questioning everyone separately. This whole act mainly just featured a lot of yelling and cursing and I wasn’t really invested. Then our only likable character, Roma, proves that he is also a terrible lying liar when his new client from the night before comes by and says he has to cancel the deal, he can’t afford it. Roma tells him that his check hasn’t been sent to the bank yet so there is still time for him to think it over. But then the office manager comes out and says stiffly and woodenly that the check was deposited at the bank. He was misreading the conversation, but I hang on to the very improbably hope that maybe he was trying to help this poor sad sack cancel it with the authorities before the allotted time ran out and he lost all his money, so maybe there would be one decent person in this office, or at least one person who does one decent thing. Roma, clearly a dick, is so pissed that Williamson ruined his deal and, ya know, saved that poor man’s life with his accidental reveal, and you’re just like, dude, you are doing fine, you’re the best salesman in the office and pretty soon you will only have to share the business with one other guy, chill the f and realize how much of a dick you are to be mad that that guy won’t become destitute because of your lies!
This is the point at which I was checked out. Bunch of dicks on that stage trying to keep demonstrating how dickish they are or something? I understand that it’s like such an honest look at desperation in the middle class and men feeling bad about their small penii but I am so done with white male stories. I think we’ve passed this kind of thing as a society. At least I have. The acting, aside from the accent focus, was fine, and if you like the play and/or the movie it’s worth seeing. While it’s a decent play I guess, that is decently performed, it’s not very compelling, and I’ll admit that this is one case where the movie is just better. Also, I can’t help but think how much better it would be to have new exciting diverse stories being told in this theatre.
INFORMATION
The lobby at the Playhouse is the worst and you will be crammed in like sardines waiting for the house to open. I had to stand in front of a mirror and then I forgot and someone was looking in it and I was like DUDE what are you doing and she was like what, it’s a mirror.
AUDIENCE
I’m not going to talk specifics about what happened with our super awful audience, but I will implore you, everyone, to stop using your phone in the theatre. Even just to peek at. At the movie theatre too. Any dark space with other people, turn off your f-ing phone. There is no valid reason to use it in the theatre. Truly, there isn’t. I dare you to think of one. Please, by all means, comment below with anything you think is a valid reason and I will tell you why it’s not. If you are a doctor on call, you shouldn’t be at the theatre. If you have little kids and you don’t trust whoever is watching them, you should not be at the theatre and you should never leave children with people you don’t trust to take care of them I mean wtf is wrong with humans are we worth saving??
STAGE DOOR
This was THE BEST stage door experience ever. Every actor came out very quickly, like within minutes, and signed and took pictures if requested. It was so efficient and quick and lovely.
The play opens with two characters sitting in a Chinese restaurant. The whole first act (an incredibly short 35 minutes, I mean what) takes place in the Chinese restaurant, which really made me want fried tofu but I’m not sure if that was the intention. First we see poor sad sack Shelley Levine (Jack Lemmon in the movie, who really can’t be beat he was the best) begging the office manager John Williamson for better leads (the Glengarry leads) so he can actually make a good sale. He’s older than the other salesmen and past his prime and you do feel a bit bad for him. Williamson, on the other hand, is cold and unfeeling but as played by Kris Marshall, kind of bland instead. You’ll know Kris as the British idiot who went to America to find girls in “Love Actually” and sang ditties about his knob and somehow managed to find hot girls because of his accent. That accent is missing here as he tries to do an American accent, which is fine, but it seemed like all his focus was on the accent instead of acting so he was very stiff and wooden.
The focus on keeping up their fake American accents was apparent with the rest of the British cast too. Scene two of the Chinese restaurant duos featured Dave Moss, the brash and aggressive jerk who plans to rob the office of its best leads and sell them to a competitor. He tries to convince George Aaronow, the least memorable character in this production, to join him, and threatens to incriminate him if he doesn’t. Playing George, Don Warrington was fine but I don’t know if the accent was tripping him up or if he just wasn’t good with stuttered interjections. His character has a lot of repeated words like ‘I – I – I’ that get interrupted, but it was clear he was waiting to be interrupted and that threw everything off kilter a little. It always bothers me when actors don’t have more planned in case their costars wait a half second too long to interrupt. You gotta keep going or else it’s so obvious that the timing is off. I remember in “Once Upon a Mattress”, which we did in middle school and it was horrible because you need more sophisticated actors to make that show not terrible, there’s a line the princess says: “But that’s my huckle—“ and then the queen or something interrupts her. Okay people, it’s clear she’s going to say huckleberry so just make like you’re going to say huckleberry and let her actually interrupt you. Don’t say huckle and then let there be open air. You get what I’m saying. Don didn’t have his berry ready.
So all of this was kind of boring and hard to get into because most of the characters sucked so far, but then in Scene 3, Christian finally shows up, as Ricky Roma, and it’s the first (maybe only?) truly enjoyable, spirited bit of the play. Everyone perked up not just because he’s more electrifying to watch, but because his character is much more fun. An ass, but fun. He’s talking in the restaurant booth to maybe a good friend – you assume from the conversation – and he’s just going on and on about his life and women and sex and it’s kind of wacky but entertaining, and then after this monologue he pauses, and asks his companion what his name is. It’s the one great laugh in the show and it really effectively establishes Roma’s character. Great scene, Mamet.
In Act two, we lose the Chinese restaurant for their burgled office, all grey and mediocre with crap and papers everywhere. A cop is there questioning everyone separately. This whole act mainly just featured a lot of yelling and cursing and I wasn’t really invested. Then our only likable character, Roma, proves that he is also a terrible lying liar when his new client from the night before comes by and says he has to cancel the deal, he can’t afford it. Roma tells him that his check hasn’t been sent to the bank yet so there is still time for him to think it over. But then the office manager comes out and says stiffly and woodenly that the check was deposited at the bank. He was misreading the conversation, but I hang on to the very improbably hope that maybe he was trying to help this poor sad sack cancel it with the authorities before the allotted time ran out and he lost all his money, so maybe there would be one decent person in this office, or at least one person who does one decent thing. Roma, clearly a dick, is so pissed that Williamson ruined his deal and, ya know, saved that poor man’s life with his accidental reveal, and you’re just like, dude, you are doing fine, you’re the best salesman in the office and pretty soon you will only have to share the business with one other guy, chill the f and realize how much of a dick you are to be mad that that guy won’t become destitute because of your lies!
This is the point at which I was checked out. Bunch of dicks on that stage trying to keep demonstrating how dickish they are or something? I understand that it’s like such an honest look at desperation in the middle class and men feeling bad about their small penii but I am so done with white male stories. I think we’ve passed this kind of thing as a society. At least I have. The acting, aside from the accent focus, was fine, and if you like the play and/or the movie it’s worth seeing. While it’s a decent play I guess, that is decently performed, it’s not very compelling, and I’ll admit that this is one case where the movie is just better. Also, I can’t help but think how much better it would be to have new exciting diverse stories being told in this theatre.
INFORMATION
The lobby at the Playhouse is the worst and you will be crammed in like sardines waiting for the house to open. I had to stand in front of a mirror and then I forgot and someone was looking in it and I was like DUDE what are you doing and she was like what, it’s a mirror.
AUDIENCE
I’m not going to talk specifics about what happened with our super awful audience, but I will implore you, everyone, to stop using your phone in the theatre. Even just to peek at. At the movie theatre too. Any dark space with other people, turn off your f-ing phone. There is no valid reason to use it in the theatre. Truly, there isn’t. I dare you to think of one. Please, by all means, comment below with anything you think is a valid reason and I will tell you why it’s not. If you are a doctor on call, you shouldn’t be at the theatre. If you have little kids and you don’t trust whoever is watching them, you should not be at the theatre and you should never leave children with people you don’t trust to take care of them I mean wtf is wrong with humans are we worth saving??
STAGE DOOR
This was THE BEST stage door experience ever. Every actor came out very quickly, like within minutes, and signed and took pictures if requested. It was so efficient and quick and lovely.
Related Posts
Edinburgh Fringe Part 2: The Stand-ups, the Two-Handers: Janeane Garofalo, Josie Long, Afghanistan is Not Funny
Welcome to Part 2 of our Edinburgh Fringe round-up! Today we are talking the two stand-ups we saw: American Gen X favorite Janeane Garofalo and British Gen X favourite Josie Long. We’re also talking about the show “Afghanistan is Not Funny” from Henry Naylor. You may be like ‘that doesn’t seem like it goes with two stand-up performances?’ and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but we are making it work because a) they are all two-handers so it makes sense (as does my version of the phrase two-hander to mean one person and not two because how many victims of chain-saw accidents are there in the theatre world? not many) and b) Naylor is a comedy writer and, despite the title, definitely fancies himself a comedian in this show! Was it all funny? Some of it was! Did they all start late and go long? You bet your ass they did, in true Fringe tradition!
Janeane Garofalo: Pardon My Tangent
The key lesson I took away from this set is that I forgot her name was spelled like that! Janeane was great to see mostly for nostalgia’s sake, and also because her jokes seemed tailor-made for ME! Not for the Edinburgh crowd, no sirree, it was all for me, from the perspective of an East Coaster trying to make sense of British cleaning products (awful!) and Scottish culture. Just like me! It was super New York (walking dogs around the city and getting jealous of bigger apartments!), super ’90s-era Americana (jokes about James Spader!), super left-wing (unapologetically anti-Trump supporters!). She used the word ‘shanda’ (it means shame!), and even brought up my favorite TV show from one month when I was 13 “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” (I really only was interested because it was always on “The Soup”). I mean, no one has talked about that show since Kathy Griffin in one of her HBO specials from the early aughts! What a fun memory! “Ma, there’s a baby in the terlet!”
Janeane began her set in a remarkable way: by telling the crowd she never really was a stand-up comedian and is no good at it. Way to prime the crowd. She didn’t have a real set planned, just some notes and some off the cuff observations about NYC and Edinburgh. It was chaotic and messy, but still fun and enjoyable, at least for me, because I was the target audience. (I can’t say the drunk-off-her-ass-jerky girl behind me who was talking the whole time and kicking my seat enjoyed it as much.) The vibe I got was mostly that we could be, and should be, best friends.
She told a ridiculous story about how she was hit by a car in New York recently, but it wasn’t really the driver’s fault because “I was wearing these pants.” Reader, she was wearing camo print pants. I loved her jokes about her upper body strength, because as soon as she came onstage in her tank top I thought ‘man she looks ripped’. And lo and behold, later she talked about how we audience members may have assumed that she had muscle, but it was all an illusion she meticulously created: by pulling her bra straps and shirt straps high and tight behind her neck, almost like a halter (which she highly recommended we try) and by having strategically placed tattoos that made it seem like her delts were coming to a point. All of this together gave the facade of musculature from the front, while the people on the sides of the room could see it was all loose meatbags. I was dying, it was all so true, it really had worked on me.
The best thing about Janeane is how unapologetically left-wing she is, and rightly so. Now that Trump is out of office (omg hopefully forever but who knows) people seem less actively angry towards his supporters because it’s not as urgent a threat, but NOT JANEANE! She knows that we can never forgive, never forget, that they aren’t ‘decent peace-loving people’ BY DEFINITION. Loved her for this! I also loved that she makes relentless fun of Tom Cruise and got in a fight with her brother about it. Please let’s be friends!
INFORMATION: Janeane is playing at the Wine Bar at Gilded Balloon Teviot. It’s not even close to looking like a wine bar! There are some seats up in a balcony but mostly it’s very strangely laid out rows of chairs. The girl next to me was wearing a mask! First and only other masker of the whole Fringe!
Josie Long: Re-Enchantment
Let’s cut right to the chase (unlike this show because it started super late packing in last-minute wannattendees into the very hot basement (none of these venues had air flow, it was very concerning) which you can’t really fault because she is amazing and who wouldn’t want to see her?): This is one of the best, most cohesively written comedy specials I’ve ever seen. It was better than 90% of the specials on Netflix, all of which I’ve tried, few of which I’ve been able to finish. (No good!). Not since I saw Mike Birbiglia do his special “The New One” at the Leicester Square Theatre (which eventually went on to Broadway) did I find a comedy hour (plus 15) so well-written and performed.
The best part is that it seems so chaotic and casual, as Josie has such an open and friendly and spontaneous vibe, so it seems like she’s just talking, sharing with friends. But you see at the end that it was all perfectly planned and formatted. And HILARIOUS. She mainly talks about how she has moved from England to Scotland (all the cool kids are doing it!), about how great Scotland is (it is!), and about how urgently we all need to be fighting against impending fascism (we do!). For someone who looks like the nicest, sweetest mom at the preschool dropoff who brings cookies for the other moms, she is surprisingly and amazingly radical left-wing. LOVES IT! I loved that she told the crowd that we had to fight more, harder. That we had to stop making fun of groups like Insulate Britain because THEY’RE RIGHT. And they are! People complain about them and similar action groups because they don’t like their tactics, but, as Josie reminded us, that’s what people said about the suffragettes and MLK, and we’ve just conveniently forgotten all their controversial methods.
It’s funny that both of our female comedian shows made it super left-wing and political, but while Janeane gives off that great “don’t you dare f with me” energy, Josie has the energy of a little blonde girl in a flower dress wearing pigtails, despite being 40. Her bubbly joyousness is infectious and I have absolutely added her to my list of faves.
INFORMATION: The show is at Monkey Barrel 3 (downstairs) at the Monkey Barrel Comedy venue. It is VERY HOT and there was an AC unit, but Josie had them turn it off because it was noisy. If I didn’t love her so much I would be cursing her out for that one (okay I did a little). There’s a bar upstairs with water pitchers, but after the show they shoo you out directly to the outside world, so you can’t go back up for more water. There are small toilets downstairs in the back of the room.
Afghanistan is Not Funny, by Henry Naylor
Henry Naylor has some STORIES. This writer and actor and comedian was doing regular radio and TV gigs as a writer and actor and comedian 20 years ago yet somehow ended up in Afghanistan during the start of the war, alongside photojournalists and government operatives and unofficial government operatives. He went to research his previous show, but man, the average playwright doesn’t just up and go to a war to do some researching on a whim! He was here to tell those stories, and we wanted to hear them. Unforch, he’s focusing too much inwardly, and not on what those stories mean outside of his career and to the wider world, despite what he says to the contrary.
That first Fringe show, “Finding Bin Laden”, was a successful satire about media representation of the Iraq invasion. So successful, in fact, that it almost became a movie with Hugh Grant. We learn all of this, because the potential and then non-potential of this movie’s existence seems to be the crux of this show. Even though this guy saw the real effects of the American presence, even though he saw endless suffering especially among injured children, even though he was literally held at gunpoint by a group of Afghani mujahideen, the thesis of this show seems to be about him and his success and his almost movie-making, which it shouldn’t be. He even talks at length about how he knew that in this show, as opposed to “Finding Bin Laden”, he needed to tell the story of those suffering children, especially of a girl his photographer friend captured who was holding what could only be the wrapped body of a dead baby, this poor girl whose memory haunts him to this day, to finally tell the world her story. But he doesn’t. Sure he shows her picture in a big dramatic flourish that is clearly meant to move us emotionally, but it doesn’t because it comes without support — after he rants endlessly about how his movie fell apart because Russell Brand is an asshole who f-ed someone’s granddaughter, and he says this over and over and you’re like, wait, I thought this show was about the suffering of children in Afghanistan, not about this guy complaining about how Russell Brand’s lack of tact ruined his movie. It made such a brave and open man, who has been through and seen so much, seem self-satisfied in his storytelling, which I’m sure isn’t the case.
So, tonally it was completely off, and it felt unedited. It ran 15 minutes long, but it should have been 20 minutes shorter. It’s so interesting how much he spoke about his intentions with this show — he clearly wanted it to be about the people and the things he saw there, and yet he didn’t make it about that. There was a great format he used, going through four stages of awareness he learned in therapy (unconscious incompetence to conscious competence), but after the second stage it sort of fell apart in relation to the narrative. There’s so much potential for his storytelling — like I said, he was HELD AT GUNPOINT BY THE MUJAHIDEEN — he just needs to remember his purpose in sharing. We want to hear more of those stories, which would automatically convey the gravity he wanted to share, and all the real things he saw over there, and not hear vulgarities about Russell Brand.
INFORMATION: The show is in Gilded Balloon Teviot, in a slightly-more-professional seeming room than a lot of the others, but it’s set up in the worst way: it’s a very steep room, with all the seats reached from just one aisle, and the only door is on the OTHER side of that aisle. Meaning, you have to cross the stage area to get from door to aisle and vice versa. MEANING, if you have to pee or leave early, you have to literally say excuse me to the actor on the stage and force him to take a step back, as one guy did. yikes! And yes you may see that we were in Teviot for Janeane and you might think ‘oh how convenient’ but nope, we had a different show in between these two, so we were constantly running back and forth across town. Felt like a bloody boomerang! Plan your days wisely!
Sondheim’s “Assassins” at the Menier: Creepy, Provocative, & Flawless
“Someone tell the story, someone sing the song. Every now and then the country goes a little wrong. Every now and then a madman’s bound to come along! Doesn’t stop the story – story’s pretty strong. Doesn’t change the song.” Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, dark, and often funny look at what drives certain people to commit atrocities, “Assassins” is an exceptional and provocative show. Its current production at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory is one of the most well-done shows I have yet seen in London. If you are a frequent reader, you may be thinking, well that doesn’t say much. However, I could say right now that I found not a single fault with it…but then you’d have little reason to keep reading, so I won’t.
These above-quoted opening lines of the show (the true opening of the story, after a crazy sort-of prologue) reflect what our main characters seek: for their story to be added to history, to become part of the main story, be sung of. To gain fame as part of history’s need to always mention them in the same breath as the great men they assassinated. And that’s what this story brilliantly tells – how Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Reagan, Ford, all these important presidents, were killed or almost killed, but by barely mentioning their names. The names that matter here are the assassins – Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, Hinckley, Fromme – as we see things from their perspectives. To make things even more twisted and frightening, this is staged in a sort of abandoned carnival, with each assassination attempt treated as a carnival game and lit-up “Hit!” or “Miss!” signs accompanying each gunshot. Like carnivals weren’t scary before.
First, the central character: “Johnny Booth was a handsome devil!” These lyrics are hella true in this production. Broadway’s Aaron Tveit is adoooorable. More importantly, he handles the vital role of John Wilkes Booth sublimely, being a charming and debonair Southerner who clearly conveys a base desire for ill-gained notoriety. Although his main action (killing Abraham Lincoln, obviously) is done early on, he hangs around to support the others, because, as the Balladeer sings early on, “Damn you, Johnny! You paved the way for other madmen to make us pay!” Booth pretty much started a trend in America, and so his presence is required throughout the show.
First, the central character: “Johnny Booth was a handsome devil!” These lyrics are hella true in this production. Broadway’s Aaron Tveit is adoooorable. More importantly, he handles the vital role of John Wilkes Booth sublimely, being a charming and debonair Southerner who clearly conveys a base desire for ill-gained notoriety. Although his main action (killing Abraham Lincoln, obviously) is done early on, he hangs around to support the others, because, as the Balladeer sings early on, “Damn you, Johnny! You paved the way for other madmen to make us pay!” Booth pretty much started a trend in America, and so his presence is required throughout the show.
Despite his inherent evil, Booth seems the most stable of all the characters, and probably is. The most unstable is also my favorite. “Look on the bright side, not on the sad side…I am going to the Lordy”, sings Charles J. Guiteau, the most weirdly likable character in this production, probably because the actor, Andy Nyman, is so damn good in this role, petrifying but kind of lovable. Guiteau was executed for killing President Garfield, after being denied the ambassadorship to France, which he had long assumed would be given him when he requested it. Some of the lyrics to his big song actually came from the poem he wrote the day of his execution and recited on the gallows as he laughed and danced, before hanging. The poem was called “I am going to the Lordy”. Sondheim turned this into the most catchy, horrifyingly optimistic song that captures Guiteau’s, well, gallows humor and clear insanity. Here, Guiteau also sings and dances on the gallows, performing a cakewalk and an ever-intensifying song before swinging from the noose in front of us. It’s so disturbing and so powerful. Also, Nyman does the best American accent by a Brit that I’ve heard so far in London theatre.
Before deciding to kill the president, Guiteau writes books that don’t sell and he convinces himself and others that he’s the future Ambassador to France. By seeing our characters’ failures and blown ambitions, you start to feel for them. You think, this poor guy couldn’t catch a break, and yes obviously needs mental healthcare that no one is going to provide. The music and the stories lead you on a path to almost commiseration, and then hopefully you snap out of it and realize how f-ed up you have to be to consider making this turn. But that’s the genius of “Assassins”, showing history from their perspectives and forcing you to recognize their humanity.
Personal failures as well as professional failures take blame for coaxing some down this path. “I am unworthy of your love” is a duet between two strangers, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Carly Bawden) and John Hinckley Jr. (Harry Morrison), the failed assassins of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, respectively. The memorable and pretty lovely song shows how some are led towards awful deeds in trying to impress others. The show’s Hinckley is an odd man who can’t find love, in the all-too-familiar sense of men like the Santa Barbara killer who get angry and frustrated when women, whom they were told their whole lives that they as men were entitled to, rebuffed them. Our society’s continued view of women as playthings and pretty things that men should have a say over is creepily reflected in this character, as he decides to kill a president in order to impress a movie star enough that she’d actually know he existed (as opposed to, say, the modern version of men killing the women who threaten their world view).
Fromme, on the other hand, tries to assassinate Ford in order to impress her lover, Charles Manson, whom she believed was Jesus reincarnated. And if Jesus wishes for you to kill the president, you do that! (No, seriously, don’t, even if it’s really Jesus.) Luckily, she and Hinckley failed. In this production, Fromme’s failure is shown as mostly due to her ridiculosity of a partner in crime, played by British favorite Catherine Tate as Sara Jane Moore. It’s a smallish role but she’s hilarious. A lot of people think Tate plays it too over the top, but I found her antics necessary to brighten up all the dark psychology of the show. (Except when she accidentally shoots her dog. Not funny. Luckily a stuffed dog was used, so sort of funny.) Her best bits include her shooting practice on a bucket of KFC, after which she eats the chicken. But nothing is funnier than when Moore and Squeaky botch their assassination attempt so freaking badly that, in their mad rush to complete it in a crazy moving crowd, they are unable to reload and instead throw bullets at Ford while shouting ‘Bang!’ Amaaaazing.
The real brilliance of the show is demonstrating how a person’s disappointment in living a small life can lead to such a path, just to make some kind of name for himself. And we know this so well. Mental instability of all sorts leads many to commit mass atrocities because, as we know, our media will make perpetrators famous. Whenever the awful story of a school shooting or of President Lincoln’s final days is told, so too will the name of the murderers, or of Booth.
No one explains this better than Booth himself, who uses it as a selling point when trying to persuade our narrator, the Balladeer, whose identity becomes a beyond genius twist (that was added in the revival, and I can’t see the musical being as poignant without it). In the recording I know best, my balladeer was Neil Patrick Harris, so my favorite songs had a pop-star clarity and zest to them. Here, the Balladeer is sung like a twangy country singer by Jamie Parker, but it totally works and won me over. So the Balladeer has been on the sidelines all night, telling the tales of others most judgmentally – in the above-quoted “Ballad of Booth”, he reinforces that those madmen who have made us pay “have had their say, but only for a day….Angry men don’t write the rules and guns don’t right the wrongs. Hurts a while but soon the country’s back where it belongs.” But as things come to an end, the Balladeer is not so convinced that the country bounces back so easily, if ever, and he’s more open to discussion about leaving his moral high ground, not wanting to end things as a simple narrator strumming his guitar, but as someone who, like his subjects, will live forever in infamy as long as his target lives forever in fame. Booth tells him that their names will always go hand in hand, that just as Lincoln’s great life and deeds will never be studied without Booth’s being studied and remembered as well, so too will the next great Assassin in this way share the triumphs of his victim. It’s incredibly disturbing and true, that a killer can so easily usurp the greatness of his victim. (I wish so strongly for the media should stop reporting the names of people who commit mass shootings and the like, somehow, if it would make sense. Gaining such immediate fame is often the only goal, and I wish there was a way to not give these awful people the satisfaction of being remembered. (It would also be great if we had legit mental healthcare systems but that’s maybe more farfetched.))
All of this is demonstrated pretty remarkably by The Proprietor, the gun salesman and carnival runner, played hauntingly by Simon Lipkin, who represents a sort of universal id. He lures our characters into the darkness by reminding them of the show’s eerie twisted theme, that “Everybody’s got the right to be happy”. He opens the show with lines like, “Hey kid, failed your test? Dream girl unimpressed? Show her you’re the best – if you can shoot a president”, chillingly blunt lyrics that immediately set the disturbing and blackly humorous tone for the show.
That Sondheim makes you think all of this, makes you laugh and feel heartbroken at the world, all in a 100 or so minute musical is a testament to his genius. That this extremely difficult show is such a rousing success is a testament to the Menier, to this spectacular cast, and to this faultless production, which is now completely sold out, and rightly so. With any luck, it’ll transfer to mainstem West End so more people can appreciate how freaking great this show is.
