"The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk": Love, War, and Marc Chagallby Randi / February 1, 2018
It’s important to have queer stories, but I don’t think you should get points just for ticking a box — they actually have to be good. With “Moonlight”, a film about not only gay characters but black characters winning the Oscar last year (despite the Academy being old white men) (and despite the incredible initial mixup), and with “Call Me By Your Name” up for awards this weekend, our entertainment culture has maybe? hopefully? finally reached the point where it’s not enough to have token minority characters or storylines; they also have to be interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile too. And done with respect. I don’t think any form of inclusivity that seems done just for brownie points should be lauded as the pinnacle of inclusivity. In London right now, however, you still get the points for a paint-by-numbers queer story even if it’s super thin and amateur. Because everybody is indeed talking about “Jamie”, the new London musical, and Brits are loving it, but it is…how do I say…not very good.
Like I said, literally everyone else adores it. And it has a lot of the kind of fun that mass crowds love in things like “Mamma Mia!” – you know, the bright, loud, danceable shows. No one is bothered if the dialogue is cringey or the songs are uninspired if everyone is bopping in their seat. But I am, because I am always waiting for a great British score and, well, I’m still waiting. With the exception of Tim Minchin’s scores (the superb “Matilda”, “Groundhog Day”), British musical theatre has been in trouble since, well, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s heyday. That’s a long time to go with nothing of true substance to show for it. Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that in that time frame of literal decades of dreck was Elton John’s “Billy Elliot” score. Okay so Tim Minchin, Webs, and Elton John. I guess all the promising writers went to Broadway. And to think people are surprised when I explain that Broadway is on a whole nother playing field to the West End when it comes to musical theatre. I know it sounds mean but tell me what British-born original musical of the last decade or two has been of the high quality you would expect from one of the greatest theatre cities in the entire world. Because of this draught, I was so pumped for “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” because all I saw were rave reviews and I REALLY wanted London to have a great original musical finally that wasn’t a Broadway transfer. I wanted to fall in love with a brand-new score and listen to it until I memorized it and wait eagerly for it to go to Broadway. But this score is not that.
While it is outwardly fun — like there are bright colors and happy tunes and people dancing so the masses will be more than satisfied — and it is great to have the representation like this on such a stage and scale, I was just so unimpressed with the actual bones of the show. I wish I loved it, because it’s such a great story and it’s so important to show to people, especially young boys who identify with Jamie. I just wish such a great opportunity for representation came with quality writing.
It’s impossible not to compare this show to “Kinky Boots”. “Jamie”, to me, is about a production team that saw the enormous success of “Kinky Boots” all over the world and thought, ‘Hey, it seems that people really love stories about boys that don’t fit the traditional mold of masculinity, and the psychology that informs their decisions and how it affects the NOPE WAIT IT’S JUST ABOUT BOYS DRESSING UP AS GIRLS THAT’S IT WE WILL DO THAT!’ There was such potential in developing stories inspired by such departures from traditional male roles, but instead they seemed to mine the most asinine humor from it with a sort of baseline effort.
“Jamie” is about a teenage boy named Jamie who is living in a small English town where the accents are such that everyone pronounces his name ‘Jeh-meh’ and he is wayyy toooo faaaabulous for it. He wants to be a drag queen, and his loving but one-dimensional mother supports him, and his classmates and friends seem to find it cool, except for one of the typical asshole boys who thinks he is macho but is really obviously fragile in his masculinity. And his absentee father doesn’t approve but he was never really in his life or wanting to be. Okay, cool, Jamie, go be a drag queen, you are beautiful so you will be great at it. This is all clear in the first five minutes, though, and it’s very formulaic. Even formulaic setups could make great shows if they are handled well, but the remaining hours of the show feel just like filler, and on an amateur level. They fill it with the local drag shop (I’m sorry, what towns in rural England have entire shops for drag queens?) run by a great drag queen from the past named Loco Chanelle, a really low-effort drag name, who sings a very, VERY unnecessary and cringe-worthy song about his past and how he killed his lover maybe??, and it gets a goddamn REPRISE??? They fill it with a stern, annoying teacher who has a serious problem with Jamie’s breaking out of the straight lines she wants boys and girls to stay inside. Her outdated beliefs are only a tiny bit easier to believe than the fact that a school teacher in a tiny town has Christian Louboutin heels, another thing that is mentioned ostensibly to help the writers reach their word limit. And they fill it with bad music.
I hate writing this, because I do like liking things, and I want to love everything musical theatre so badly. Even with a lackluster book, if a show has fun or lovely or even just original music, that’s a win. But this score is complete cringe. The trite, derivative lyrics stick in your head, so it has that going for it. There’s the title song, where everyone jumps around like they’re at a rave and yells “Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie!” The melody is exactly how you are imagining it. I don’t even know if that song had other lyrics. The opening number, the one that has to set the tone for the whole show, is called, “And You Don’t Even Know It”, and it just says a phrase and then repeats “And you don’t even know it” over and over and over. “You’re a star! And you don’t even know it! Mini bar! And you don’t even know it!” Okay I made that last lyric up but you get the picture. I LOVE loved (sarcasm) the big ‘I Want’ number of the show, called “Spotlight”, where Jamie’s classmates sang of him “Out of the darkness, into the spotlight, out of the darkness, into the spotlight.” In that one was the part when I realized ‘ohhh this is going to be terrrrible’ — when the female classmates were sitting at a table doing the cups thing from ‘Pitch Perfect’ to the melody, the stupid thing you learn at summer camp when you’re little and somehow Anna Kendrick made cool? Anyway, the girls were doing that as accompaniment and my eyes got stuck in the back of my head. Then, ohh man, my favorite, the big runway catwalk number called “Work of Art” where everyone sang of Jamie (I’m sensing a redundant theme) about how he’s a work of art: “Mona Lisa isn’t she sir, work of art” was one lyric that I almost screamed at. I just…listen, not everything has to have Sondheim-level lyrics, but at least some effort would be appreciated.
Oh my real favorite part was when the mother had one of her hackneyed ballads about how she would do things differently if she met herself again (title of song: “If I Met Myself Again” picture 1000 eye roll emojis) and I SHIT YOU NOT, two dancers were BREAKDANCING during it. DURING A SAD BALLAD. It wasn’t ballet-like emotional dancing to the slow music; it was literally breakdancing to a nonexistent rhythm as though someone somewhere were scratching a record and Jason Mendoza was patiently waiting for the beat to drop but it never would. I looked around me in the darkness for the Punk’d cameras. I have never been so flabbergasted at direction choices. Man alive.
The only real conflict is for Jamie to get enough nerve to go onstage in his dress and not let the stupidest kid in school or the father that abandoned him get to him. That this super-confident, quick-witted boy would waste a moment thinking about what the mean boy in school thought of him was hard to believe, but okay, everyone has bullies in high school and it’s hard to deal with. But is this so-tiny-it’s-hard-to-even-call-him-a-minor-character really the only source of external conflict? To make up for that, Jamie fights with his mother for no good reason, and his mother sings a song about how he’s her boy (called “He’s My Boy”) and the audience was supposed to cry but it was forcing drama onto a cotton candy cloud that vanished into thin air as soon as pressure was applied to it.
Almost every character was stereotyped and lacking any semblance of nuance. I couldn’t believe that this show got this far without people editing it to bring it into the best shape possible. Or at least shape enough to run around the block. Only one character wasn’t completely clichéd and stereotyped, because it is one of the first appearances of such a character in musical theatre. Jamie’s best friend is a Muslim girl named Pritti (played by Lucie Shorthouse) who wears a hijab. As far as I know this is new, and this is minority representation this show deserves to be commended for. Lucie is the only character that gets to shine, aside from Jamie. She gets the one song in the show that didn’t make me want to tear my hair out, called “It Means Beautiful”, about the Arabic equivalent of the name Jamie. It’s not a great melody and the lyrics don’t live up to the nice sentiment that gives rise to the song (i.e., Pritti telling Jamie that he is indeed beautiful and look Arabic proves it), but still, it was decent. Lucie unfortunately does annoying popstar styling with her voice throughout the song, where she kind of catches the sound during held notes (something the director, if he exists, should have stopped) but she is really talented.
And Jamie himself shines bright. John McCrea has real star quality shining through even this pile. He stands out physically, a lithe, otherworldly-blonde, pale young man who regularly shows off how incredibly flexible he is. He manages to imbue the dullness with pops of vigor here and there, usually by doing an impossibly high kick in heels. He delivers one of the only lines that made me laugh – a bit where he’s trying to climb out the bathroom window and the mean teacher asks what he thinks he’s doing and he says “…Parkour??” That actually cracked me up. I hope that John gets a role in the future that is actually worthy of his talent.
Although I’m pretty sure he’s happy with this one. Everyone seems to be loving it.
Aside from the horrendous, actively bad score, the book is a mess as well. There is way too much of everything (so much attention to the drag queen, the teacher, the father, the friends) and yet not enough of those things to make it worthwhile, no real sense of understanding what they are trying to accomplish. And as if this storyline didn’t feel straight out of 1992 enough, there are outdated jokes peppering the book scenes, like talk of how all Kim Kardashian does is wear heels. It’s so low-effort.
OH so part of the nonexistent conflict is that the mean boy calls Jamie a ‘minger’ and Jamie is destroyed by it. So I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it was bad because it was basically the only real drama. Non-British people will likely not understand that part when they see it, but they are going to hate it anyway so whatever. So after the show I text my English friend “hey what does minga mean” because see I heard it with the accent, and she pretty much died laughing. She explained that it’s a very British way of calling someone skanky, like so skanky that no one would ever want to sleep with them. I thanked her for explaining it and then threw a glass at the wall in my fury over a musical basing all of its conflict over something so trivial as a boy calling another boy this word, as if Jamie, our unstoppable protagonist, would actually care that this idiot football player called him that.
Luckily the end sucked, with redemption of the white male asshole because who doesn’t love forgiveness that isn’t deserved. At least I guess we should try to redeem asshole children, who still have a chance to do some good, but I’m pretty sure that kid is going to remain a jerk forever. I’m angry that this disappointing show dragged (no pun intended) for almost three freaking hours. This isn’t “Les Mis”, people! And I’m angry and uncomfortable that a show that is professing to fill the niche of queer and inclusive art can still manage to be so sexist. There’s very often that unspoken but obvious thought that ‘we can’t be sexist towards women; we’re gay!’ and it’s definitely happening here. Its treatment of gender says while men like Jamie can cross gender lines and break down barriers, women shall remain in their supporting positions of the men around them. You may be thinking that there’s not a lot of good they can do for the women when this is a story about this one boy, but they manage to do a whole lot of bad, so. The girls in his school face a constant barrage of sexism from the male classmates, from being shown dicks they don’t want to see from dicks they don’t want to bother with, to being harassed with talk about how the boys will ‘drill’ them (they say ‘drilling’ a lot) whenever they want. And it’s a total Law & Order: SVU situation: The treatment is obviously bad, but it’s there not to serve as an example of bad behavior, but to serve as an example of what is considered normal. That pisses me off and it’s dangerous to include it in the show’s world as unnecessary examples of normalcy.
When the last musical assault on my ears and brain ended, the entire audience shot up to their feet quicker than I’ve ever seen. I guess when all the modern original musical work in your country is kind of on this level, you don’t expect, or get, any better.
AUDIENCE
The two old ladies in front of me were brushing their hair. One fumbled around her purse during the opening number, brought out a big brush, and brushed her hair, probably 100 strokes. Then she gave it to her friend. I can’t with people.
The best part of this show was the bubble tea I got next door afterwards.
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Lungs but Socially Distanced: The Perfect Play for a Pandemic, Though Not a Perfect Play
Recently, the Old Vic held pandemic-safe performances of last year’s hit production of Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt I-always-want-to-say-Lucas-but-it’s-definitely-not-Matt-Lucas Smith. Since I missed the regular run of this modern four-hander (yes correct), I was super excited to catch this version – which was performed live at the Old Vic, but to an empty auditorium and streamed to a virtual audience. The two actors also stayed six feet apart on the stage, with two different cameras on them at all times. Honestly, it was the perfect play to test this sort of format. Since it’s about a distressed couple, it worked well to see both characters the entire time separated by space and camera angles, and since it’s a one-act it worked well for me to be closer to a bathroom break without disrupting anyone (I love an interval).
The livestream situation was better considered and executed than the play itself. Duncan Macmillan’s present-day look at a couple deciding whether it’s morally wrong to have children was, shall we say, relevant to our interests. We were really excited to see a deep-dive into the ethical considerations that millennials discuss as part of this decision, and to see how they grapple with these considerations, how they make this extremely difficult decision. And we got the first part. The two famously talented actors have the early parts of the conversations that we’ve all had, with the same comments about carbon footprints, but then…then they just decide they want a kid, without applying the conversation to that decision at all. Then that aspect of the play – the aspect that it was billed as being entirely about – was finished.
Instead, it became a look at this couple’s particular dysfunctions from then on, like any other play about a couple. And it was compelling, but I found it too disjointed. It was like two separate plays morphed into one. The first part, about the ethics of procreating while the world is on fire, ended just when it would have been the most compelling: once they actually decided to have a baby, once they had to actually own their decision and defend it, the part that would have been novel.
On its own, the second half was an interesting look at this couple that I was not rooting for (but maybe I’m biased against them because the glaring, grimacing Matt Smith at times looked like a goddamn bare-hands murderer (i.e. a man who doesn’t need a weapon; he will kill you with his bare hands), while Foy looked like a sweet lil bunny rabbit (not helped by her juvenile overalls, which I LOVED)), but it felt like a completely different show, seen through a lens that wasn’t in play at the start and with some hella shocking time jumps. The only common thread throughout was that they always wondered if they were good people – they said the phrase ‘good people’ about themselves so many times that it’s a shame that was already taken as a play title. But they never actually tried to, or wanted to, answer that question.
Still, it was wonderful to see a live play even though I wasn’t there. Knowing they were performing right then was definitely on improvement on these past recordings we’ve been watching, although nothing like being in a theatre. Also, I can’t see this working for anything other than two- or four-handers, which means the big shows (and musicals) won’t be coming in live to my living room.
INFORMATION
The Old Vic’s In Camera series continues on their website with rehearsed play readings.
The stream occurred over Zoom, which is annoying, because Zoom sucks. Also, it’s kind of ridonk that even shows where the whole audience is home still start 10 minutes late.
And because I can’t go a day without finding a mistake in a leading paper, I have to point out that The Guardian’s piece on this livestream event said “although all audience members will have the same view, tickets will be priced from £10–65 with virtual theatre-goers asked to give what they can to help support the theatre.” Erm, no, theatre-goers weren’t ‘asked to give’ shit; we bought tickets from the website just as we normally would and were stuck with whatever price point we could get (the 10 pounders were gone quick and we weren’t ‘asked’ to give more) for whatever date they showed us first. Luckily we didn’t get stuck with the £65 tickets but man alive I can’t imagine paying that much to look at my computer, no matter how good the show.
“When We Were Young And Unafraid” at City Center: Harrowing & Timely Portrayal of the Wimmins
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*Okay, I know this show is no longer on the boards. But I wrote this while it was still playing. And it’s a great play.
So, let’s just get this clear straight off: This show had nothing to do with Les Mis! Even though every time I think of the title I’m singing it, there was no reference to old timey France at all. I know! WWWYAU (this is not a good acronym I won’t use this again) is effectively a character study amid various growing ideals of feminism. Four women, with wildly different ideas about where and how women fit in the world, interact in a safe house in the 1970s, run by the president of all things Acting, Cherry Jones. |
The inimitable Queen Jones plays Agnes, a strong, independent woman running a B&B that we quickly learn doubles as a safe house for battered women when they finally (though not always permanently) leave abusive relationships. Agnes fought through two wars as a nurse, and her resulting strength and no-bullshit style is evident at all times. We learn that this badass mofo lost her nursing license by providing abortions. So you are just totally pulling for her to win, even though there’s no real contest to win or lose, just life. Also, she lives on a very remote island in I think Washington state surrounded by what’s appropriately called “Useless Bay” because it’s too shallow for ships to pass through. So I don’t know what she could win at besides the silent game.
She also rocks at not taking bullshit. This is one of my favorite qualities in a person, so Agnes was like my jam. One of the characters says to her, “Anger is like an art form with you,” and it’s true both of Agnes and Cherry Jones. Jones is one of the best stage actresses alive, probably the best non-singing one, and she does complicated and diverse levels of yelling like you can’t even imagine. It’s a treat to watch her perform and bring whatever she is in to a higher level. I never watched “24” but I imagine she made that almost like 25.
A lot of her yelling comes about because of her 16-year-old daughter Penny, played by Dana Brody playing Dana Brody. Her acting style was apparently learned from the school of speaking breathlessly and fast in such a way that you know her brain is pushing words out faster than her mouth can keep up so it sounds like gargling gibberish…but somehow it always works. Her bad enunciation and too fast brain make her a very believable teenager. She should play teenagers her whole life. Her words come out like she has a slushee machine instead of an esophagus. You catch the gist and she spews so well but the whole time she’s speaking you’re thinking why am I suddenly covered in slushee?
Penny introduces herself to us as a very headstrong, very awesome future writer for Jezebel, lamenting the idea of prom and wearing dresses in general as traditions – in her words (paraphrased) – developed by the patriarchy that place females on display and require looking nice and demure as they apologize for having a vagina. She says some pretty amazing stuff like that, but I can’t remember any more because it was covered in slushee.
Anyway, like most teenagers, she disappoints. Most of her energy soon switches focus to getting the captain of the football team to ask her to prom and then be her way-too-serious boyfriend. The whole football team captain is kind of clichéd but then again so is everything in life. She accomplishes her goals by ignoring and skipping good chunks of school, which is really stupid because she says she wants to go to Yale. (Which is also really stupid HEYOOO).
Penny also gets some really cringe-worthy advice and assistance from Maryanne (a gripping Zoe Kazan), the latest abused wife to seek refuge at Agnes’s. Maryanne seems like the quintessential ‘60s-‘70s housewife, apologizing for male chauvinism like it’s her fault for existing in their world, and teaching Penny how to charm any man: by using a babyish voice, acting stupid and needy and unable to survive without him around to chew up food and spit it in her babybird mouth. It’s all very upsetting because there are women today who still think it’s best to act like that and sacrifice any semblance of independence or ability in order to keep men happy, and of course there are shittastic men who fancy that kind of behavior as well. F the patriarchy.
So we hope that Penny will realize, like, hey Maryanne…look where your advice got you, with a crazy abusive husband who doesn’t respect you as a real person even a little bit and gets crazy violent when he realizes he might not have full control over you like a toy. But instead Penny’s like yay he plays football and I’m going to cheer for him instead of doing homework and we’re going to prom which is like the coolest and we’re gonna get married even though I’d need parental consent and Agnes would never because she’s smart.
In the midst of all these new family problems, we learn that Agnes is not actually her mother. Penny’s birth mother was one of the battered women who came to Agnes for help (and was actually friends with her beforehand), gave birth in the room of the house that we stare into the entire show, and then abandoned the baby and ran back to her abuser, who promptly killed her. Penny KNOWS ALL OF THIS. So it’s all too sad when she makes the same mistakes and follows the same path as Maryanne and her mother. It shows how ingrained the subservient role of the woman was (and still is), and how her main role was to find a husband, and even if that husband beat her it was better than being unmarried. This sick world. And there are too many people who still think like that, or blame the woman for doing exactly what the world told her she was supposed to do. Grahhhhhh.
Looking at all of this awfulness and shaking her head is Hannah (Cherise Boothe, completely awesome), a black super feminist searching the region for a group she heard was establishing an all-female lesbian commune. While Hannah’s version of ideal feminism is troubling as well (pretty much, if you aren’t a lesbian, you aren’t a feminist), it’s somehow so much better than Maryanne and Penny’s little game. Hannah would have loved Lorena Bobbit. Hannah is kind of crazy but in a fun way – she enters the house by climbing through windows and making everyone fear a burglar, and she doesn’t know how to be respectful of others or say thanks but eh she’s alright. Most of all, she’s a necessary counterpart to Maryanne.
The most powerful and the most depressing part of the show came when a celebratory Hannah stopped by to inform Agnes of the Roe v. Wade decision. She excitedly shouts “Things are changing!” and Agnes calmly takes a breath and responds, “They’ll change back.” The jaw-dropped silence that swept the audience said more about our current society than any words can. This tiny line and its reading perfectly described the past few decades and what is constantly happening to abridge womens rights.
Another very emotional and realistic hit came when Maryanne and Paul, a guest at the B&B, start to flirt with each other. Paul is an extreme suspenders kind of guy, very mild-mannered and seemingly ‘nice’. Later, Paul kisses Maryanne, not knowing any of her history, and she understandably freezes and then pushes him away. This guy we thought was so nice yells at her for being a tease, saying that she was begging him for this and now she’s tricking him with her female trickery and big eyes. So we thought Paul was one of the good ones but he was just another assclown wearing an asshat who thinks women only exist to satisfy men’s needs and doesn’t like when he is proven wrong. It was revolting but accurate. But then of course poor weak Maryanne is like “No Paul don’t call me names I’ll do whatever you want and then we can leave here together and have babies in San Francisco”. Ughhhhh why are peopleeeeeeeeeee.
So yeah, this play is intense and can be disturbing in its very complicated and accurate depictions of various sorts of mindsets. If anything, it tells the audience that we have so much work still to do, to not only achieve gender equality but to just get people to realize that yes we do want that.
Or at least I think that’s what it was about; there were a lot of phones going off. Seriously people these are your tasks: a) Realize that being a feminist just means not being an asshole, so yes you do want to fight to be one and be proud to be one, and b) turn off your phones in the theatre.
