The Annual Oscar Roundup: All (Not All) The Movies We Need To Discussby Randi / March 2, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are discussing “Girl from the North Country”, which is playing at the Noel Coward theatre in London until March 24.
As I’ve said hundreds of times, I love going into shows cold, not knowing any spoilers, not knowing the words to all the music yet, just a blank slate ready to be won over. But I may have gone overboard this week because not only did I know nothing about London’s new play “The Girl from North Country”, I knew wrong information. I thought this was about farming life in Ireland. Cue all the laughing-crying emojis because it’s about MINNESOTA. Duluth, specifically. I guess that is easily confused with Dublin? Regardless of my hysterical laughing when the show started and I heard them say ‘Duluth, Minnesota’ (internalized laughing, of course), and despite the awkwardness of this disjointed, rickety show, it’s a nice piece of theatre, enjoyable in spite of itself.
“The Girl from North Country” is about a family in Duluth in the 1930s and the cast of characters renting rooms in their ramshackle inn of sorts. They’re all suffering from the Great Depression and a lil bit of just normal depression too, it seems. It’s written and directed by Conor McPherson. Listen, when you aren’t working with Greta Gerwig or sweet lil Guillermino, it’s rarely a good idea to produce a show written and directed by the same person. You need that variation and sometimes clashing of ideas to make sure you make the best decisions for the work, as more often than not the strongest choices come out of having to defend them. If no one is challenging what’s written as is, the work can’t rise to its full potential. That’s clearly the case here, and although it doesn’t ruin the play – it’s still a lovely time, as I said – it’s not as good as it could be, and it’s full of unnecessary and ineffective aspects that would have been easily cut if more than one creative mind had been discussing them.
There are two patent examples of large, bad decisions that aren’t compelling. One is the completely annoyingly unnecessary framing device of the narrator. One actor, who plays the town doctor, also narrates the story and gives a lot of details to the audience that we don’t need. Using this needless device shows a lack of faith in the story to present what the author is aiming for. And never once did the narrator’s monologues share anything worthwhile to the story or anything that would not have been better left to the imagination. The play is pretty decent as is, but this device, borne out of a lack of confidence, distracts from the parts of quality.
The second example is the reason why I haven’t used the word ‘musical’ yet, even though everyone else (and the Oliviers) calls this production a musical. To me, it is the very epitome of a play with music, not a musical, because the music does not drive the story-telling. Instead of having the characters sing to each other to further the plot, a play with music uses the songs for their own sake unrelated to the plot, like in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” when Billie Holiday was simply performing at a concert. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing to choose, not at all, but the use of the chosen music seems haphazard. The music should still be well considered and there for a reason, and if the characters in the show are singing, the songs chosen should somewhat reflect on them enough to make sense. Here, the songs sometimes make sense, but often don’t. The one thing I knew going in was that this show uses the music of Bob Dylan. So every so often, the characters will sing a Bob Dylan song, and it will have nothing to do with the plot, but the problem was they often didn’t make sense for the characters or for what the show was ostensibly trying to achieve. I’ll point to specific examples later.
Aside from these missteps (huge as they are), the show is decent, inoffensive and overall pleasant. It tells the story of the Laine family in Duluth, headed by the stern, imposing Nick (Ciaran Hinds (I know)), whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) is suffering from a form of dementia that keeps her alternating between having no idea what is going on to having zero filter on her speech and actions. Their son, Gene (Sam Reid), has amounted to nothing and is a piece of a nothing shithead, we see because of how he treats a black man, but I honestly think the writer wants us to feel bad for him for some reason, which um no. Their daughter, Marianne, is a black woman (Sheila Atim) that was left in their inn as a baby, so they decided to raise her as their own. There’s a whole other show to be made just about this relationship and how their town reacted to it, but we strangely don’t get much in the way of racial unease, which is odd because it for sure would have created some. I wonder if the writer wanted us to think highly of all the characters for not calling attention to this, but it just seems unrealistic. I mean come on it’s Minnesota in the 1930s. Or, it’s America at any time. People would have torches.
Marianne is pregnant, and single – she won’t tell anyone who the father is. At one point, she tells someone that she was impregnated by the ghost of the wind of Jesus or something weird like that and I have no idea what they were going for with that. It seemed meant to add a mystical element, but such an element had no business in a straightforward show like this. An old man in town, Mr. Perry (Karl Johnson), has offered to marry Marianne and raise the baby, which seems like a nice offer but he’s super ancient and Marianne is like nah thanks. Unfortunately, her father has no patience for her idealistic decision-making, wanting to marry someone she actually loves and all. Elizabeth, in one of her unfiltered episodes, shares that Mr. Perry once assaulted her when she was young (he’s hella old so he was an older man even when she was young) and no one seems to care, which is the most realistic part of this show. I love that Elizabeth, in all her raw, crude honesty, is often the only voice of reason in the community.
Soon two men arrive to spend the night, a man presenting himself as a reverend but he is really a slimy Bible salesman (Finbar Lynch (I mean can we talk about that name? that’s the real name of the actor. Man alive)), and a former boxer named Joe Scott. Joe for my performance was played by the understudy Emmanuel Kojo, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled because Kojo is one of the West End names I actually remember from several past productions, so lucky me. The men join existing guests Mrs. Neilsen (Debbie Kurup), a hot widow who is sleeping with Nick and maybe loves him even though he’s old and wrinkly and mean; and the Burke family, an older married couple with a grown but developmentally disabled son, Elias (Jack Shalloo). The Burkes have an interesting but ultimately unfulfilled storyline about how the grown son may have killed a woman unintentionally, and how they may be fleeing from the authorities. It sounds a lot worse than it is. Not the crime, the crime is bad, but how this fit into the show. It was random and nuts but it kind of all worked, because we’re learning about all the sad stories of those involved.
And then we have the town doctor (Adam James) who should have remained a doctor instead of moonlighting as a narrator.
The first act is actually quite well done. The chosen Bob Dylan songs, although they don’t really inform the story or characters, seem at least a little bit relevant. And if not, at least the choices are mediocre and not aggressively bad. The twangy Dylan sound of the less famous songs worked with this setting. It helps that I didn’t know 90% of the songs, so for a while everything seemed suitable and interesting. The second act, however, falls apart. They perform songs back to back (to back, I think) apropos of nothing, and you can feel the thing falling off the rails and see that the songs are the desperate attempt to keep it moving. Then, the character of Joe Scott, a really interesting, well performed and mysteriously drawn character, is done a huge disservice by having to sing “Hurricane”. This is not a song that jives well with the small, rural action of the play, a huge contrast to the other songs used, so it is seriously shoehorned in to make it fit, and it was a bad idea. Like I said, Joe is a former boxer, which seemed acceptable in the first act, but having him sing “Hurricane” made me think, wait, did they make up his backstory in order to fit this song? It’s hard to believe otherwise when the writing reveals him to have committed a robbery and be on the run from authorities. This is where they really lost me. Forcing this song into the show and molding the story around it felt so amateur and for all the damage it does to the story, the payoff is exactly nil.
After that, the action seems to happen without compelling reason shoring it up. Truly dramatic things occur, and rarely do they feel earned or warranted. Marianne’s character is poorly drawn, for such a central character, and her decision to leave town without saying goodbye to her family feels unjustified. It’s hinted at (more than hinted at) that Nick might resort to a little murder-suicide and just, like, what? And don’t get me started on the ambiguity of what actually happens to Elias (who has the second best musical performance of the night, but it is very ill-suited to the story).
What keeps the show largely afloat are the performances. Not all – most of the ensemble was obviously focusing on their American accents to the detriment of their acting. This was especially clear in the case of the poor sad Mrs. Neilsen, whose ‘I just came from my elocution class’-style of speaking was inappropriate for this setting. “Oh I will MEETUH you OUTUH-SIDUH,” she said once. She was the female equivalent of Gary Oldman when he guested on “Friends”, spitting all his t’s and popping all his p’s. Then we had other ladies giving full-on Fargo-style accents, dontcha know, because North Dakota is pretty much Minnesota, yah fer sure, so the clash was blatant and upsetting. Why don’t West End shows all have dialect coaches?? But the leading performances by Ciaran Hinds and Shirley Henderson are the compelling parts of this show and what makes it worth seeing. Ciaran, whose name I literally just found out yesterday is not pronounced as written (I’m sorry), as the gruff, well-meaning but wrong-headed patriarch Nick Laine, is so natural and believable. The tinge of his Irish accent works really well actually to convey mid-West America, and even though his character is wrong so often, he’s such an incredible actor that he makes you want to understand why.
The real star turn here is that of Shirley Henderson as Elizabeth Laine. At first, she just kind of sits in her chair and makes faces at the goings-on, and I was thinking ‘she got an Olivier nomination for this?’ However, slowly but surely her performance grows and builds so much that I would honestly think about voting for her over the “Follies” ladies. (Don’t get me started on the fourth nom.) I didn’t know at first that Shirley was that Shirley, the one I know best as Bridget Jones’s brunette friend and as Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter. Yeah, her. She’s fantastic. Her portrayal of a woman with dementia is so honest and uncomfortable and you have fremdschamen watching the whole time and you want to look away because it’s so painful, funny at times but painful, but you can’t because what she is doing is extraordinary. It’s mostly a physical role, peppered by line deliveries that could not be more perfect. She takes these words and chews them up and spits them out at such perfect moments with timing and venom that could be deadly. And then when she breaks into song, my goodness, I had no idea this lady could sing. She has the strongest voice in the whole production (and gets to do most of “Like a Rolling Stone”) and why hasn’t she been in more musical theatre? She could have single-handedly been saving British musical theatre! (Okay they still need someone besides Tim Minchin who can write scores but still.) Her performance is remarkable, how she does so much with so little and makes you invested in this story for her sake.
So clearly there are a lot of things wrong with this show, but in spite of all of that, it’s still enjoyable and a little bit moving, which I think is a testament to the performances, and also the writing. If this play could have been just a play, forgetting the weird Bob Dylan constraints, and if Conor had someone reigning him in and editing this draft, it could have been excellent. As it stands, it’s just fine, but entertaining.
AUDIENCE
Oh the joy – this was one of the best audiences I’ve witnessed in London. I didn’t see ANY phones during the show – and I was sitting in the way way back of the stalls, which usually means all you see is phones. There was a super old lady singing along sometimes and slapping her knees to the music and I shot her death stares but she was so old that that was probably dangerous. The girl next to me was coughing literally the entire first act so I moved for the second so that was fine. Honestly, most of the bad behavior came from the ushers I heard talking in the back and the back of house staff I could hear through the doors! Nonsense! Cameron Mackintosh better get his people under control.
STAGE DOOR
There were only like one or two weirdos there so I didn’t want to stay too long and also be a weirdo. The cast seemed super uninterested in talking to anyone anyway so best to skip this one.
Update: The show, with a new cast, will return to the West End from December 10, 2019 for 8 weeks.
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“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”: Broadway’s Most Hilarious and Horrible Hijinks This Season
The supremely entertaining new musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” is one of the most exciting new shows this Broadway season. Halting the omnipresent influx of jukebox musicals and, more importantly, making murder hilarious, “Gentleman’s Guide” will likely be a main player at the Tony Awards this June. Despite its somewhat unseemly subject matter, it is an old-fashioned and very British show.
The dark comedy concerns a young man named Monty Navarro, who is finally told of his birthright: that he is related to the wealthy D’Ysquith clan, and ninth in line to inherit its dukedom. (The name is pronounced like ‘dies quick’. So funny.) Monty, who seems like a well-mannered, kindhearted gentleman, begins a journey to become part of the family that quickly morphs into a killing spree.
The dark comedy concerns a young man named Monty Navarro, who is finally told of his birthright: that he is related to the wealthy D’Ysquith clan, and ninth in line to inherit its dukedom. (The name is pronounced like ‘dies quick’. So funny.) Monty, who seems like a well-mannered, kindhearted gentleman, begins a journey to become part of the family that quickly morphs into a killing spree.
Monty initially reaches out to the D’Ysquiths to bond in normal ways, but the posh elitists rebuff him. After such terrible treatment, Monty sets out to methodically, and humorously, murder each of the 8 relatives ahead of him in succession.
This surprising turn of events works because Monty is so charming, and the actor playing him, Bryce Pinkham, manipulates the pacing so well. But the real star of the show, and its biggest selling point, and the main reason to see it, is Jefferson Mays. The well respected Tony-winning actor (for 2003’s “I Am My Own Wife”) plays all eight of the doomed D’Ysquith family members, men and women, young and old. He quickly switches from the old priest (whose death showcases my favorite ridiculous staging) to young bicurious student to middle-aged actress, and he sells each character just as eight individual actors could. As each death occurs, one gets nervous that soon Mays won’t be onstage anymore. That would be a shame. (Luckily, a clever end twist and a sort of cliffhanger ending make sure that this doesn’t happen.)
Mays is truly spectacular, particularly as the young, too trusting, slightly doofy Oxbridge student who takes a fast and overzealous liking to Monty. Sadly, Henry D’Ysquith has a weakness too obvious and too delicious for Monty to ignore: his penchant for beekeeping. It is probably also obvious that his death is one of the funniest.
The lovably silly character of Henry gives Mays and Pinkham their most enjoyable song and what I thought was the highlight of the show. The song “Better With A Man” has Monty being a little overly friendly to the very obviously receptive Henry. While they sing ostensibly about friendship, the choreography clearly says otherwise, and the number verges into pure slapstick. It’s so wrong, and so funny.
The other highlight musically is a pas de trois between Monty, his married lover Sibella, and his new cousin Phoebe, whom he plans to marry. As is customary in love triangles performed on stage, the scene finds Monty trying to hide both women from each other when they both visit his home. Impressive on all counts, the scene showcases the voices of the women and the timing of Pinkham better than any other.
However, aside from these two songs, the music is disappointing. What makes it seem very old-fashioned in the best ways also accounts for its old-fashioned sense musically. Most of the music is not the kind you’d want to listen to outside the Walter Kerr theatre. There are the boring choral bits, where the ensemble sings the same uninspired lines over and over. There are solos that don’t go anywhere and feel as if written as monologues and not as sung pieces. The music often does drive the show’s plot forward, as it should, but it doesn’t do it any better than the words unsung would, which defeats the purpose of making a show into a musical. It’s the kind of show where I would love to see it again, but no way would I ever listen to the cast recording.
Despite the majority of the music being disappointing, the show itself is gold. You feel terrible for laughing and for secretly rooting for Monty, because he doesn’t seem like a bad guy (despite everything to the contrary). I love that the show boasts so much new talent, and that it’s not like anything else recently on Broadway. If you have the chance to see it, you won’t regret it. I’m sure Mays will be a strong contender come Tony night, but all I hope is that the show’s Tony performance is “Better With A Man” (cross your fingers!).
This surprising turn of events works because Monty is so charming, and the actor playing him, Bryce Pinkham, manipulates the pacing so well. But the real star of the show, and its biggest selling point, and the main reason to see it, is Jefferson Mays. The well respected Tony-winning actor (for 2003’s “I Am My Own Wife”) plays all eight of the doomed D’Ysquith family members, men and women, young and old. He quickly switches from the old priest (whose death showcases my favorite ridiculous staging) to young bicurious student to middle-aged actress, and he sells each character just as eight individual actors could. As each death occurs, one gets nervous that soon Mays won’t be onstage anymore. That would be a shame. (Luckily, a clever end twist and a sort of cliffhanger ending make sure that this doesn’t happen.)
Mays is truly spectacular, particularly as the young, too trusting, slightly doofy Oxbridge student who takes a fast and overzealous liking to Monty. Sadly, Henry D’Ysquith has a weakness too obvious and too delicious for Monty to ignore: his penchant for beekeeping. It is probably also obvious that his death is one of the funniest.
The lovably silly character of Henry gives Mays and Pinkham their most enjoyable song and what I thought was the highlight of the show. The song “Better With A Man” has Monty being a little overly friendly to the very obviously receptive Henry. While they sing ostensibly about friendship, the choreography clearly says otherwise, and the number verges into pure slapstick. It’s so wrong, and so funny.
The other highlight musically is a pas de trois between Monty, his married lover Sibella, and his new cousin Phoebe, whom he plans to marry. As is customary in love triangles performed on stage, the scene finds Monty trying to hide both women from each other when they both visit his home. Impressive on all counts, the scene showcases the voices of the women and the timing of Pinkham better than any other.
However, aside from these two songs, the music is disappointing. What makes it seem very old-fashioned in the best ways also accounts for its old-fashioned sense musically. Most of the music is not the kind you’d want to listen to outside the Walter Kerr theatre. There are the boring choral bits, where the ensemble sings the same uninspired lines over and over. There are solos that don’t go anywhere and feel as if written as monologues and not as sung pieces. The music often does drive the show’s plot forward, as it should, but it doesn’t do it any better than the words unsung would, which defeats the purpose of making a show into a musical. It’s the kind of show where I would love to see it again, but no way would I ever listen to the cast recording.
Despite the majority of the music being disappointing, the show itself is gold. You feel terrible for laughing and for secretly rooting for Monty, because he doesn’t seem like a bad guy (despite everything to the contrary). I love that the show boasts so much new talent, and that it’s not like anything else recently on Broadway. If you have the chance to see it, you won’t regret it. I’m sure Mays will be a strong contender come Tony night, but all I hope is that the show’s Tony performance is “Better With A Man” (cross your fingers!).
HABIBI Take 2: The Band’s Visit at the Donmar
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is one of my all-times, The Band’s Visit.
In 2017, I saw a preview of a little Broadway musical based on a little Israeli movie I remembered seeing years and years prior, and for the five years since that night I have rarely gone a day without thinking about how beautiful it was. That’s a long time and a lot of thinking about beauty! No ragrets! For its London premiere at the Donmar, I was hella nervous (this city and its antisemitism, wooof) but need not have been. It was treated with respect, there were no uninformed idiots protesting outside (I had some nightmares), and while it didn’t have all the superb magic of the Broadway run, it was still wonderfully done with still plenty of magic.
Read: Habibi Part 1 (The Broadway review)
The Band’s Visit is the small show that could, a slice of boring life in the Israeli desert where its inhabitants live the same day in and out, waiting for something to change but nothing ever changes, which many people across the world can surely identify with. One day, though, something different happens: a touring Egyptian military band mistakenly arrives in their little one-camel town, having mistaken this town of Bet Hatikva (made up for this show) with their intended destination Petah Tikvah (real place!). Those pesky b’s and p’s! Forced to stay overnight until the next bus, the musicians are put up at various locals’ homes, and relationships are almost-forged, as much as people can connect in almost one evening. Which, as it turns out, is enough to remind us of the importance of human connection.
The beauty of the show that I thought so much about, well, first of all it was mainly the music. This sounds like a nothing story on paper, sure, but David Yazbeck’s music is what brings it alive. With a mix of klezmer, Arabic music, orchestral concertos, all kinds of traditional, lovely sounds from the Middle East, it’s so well considered, so gorgeous and moving, with each melody and lyric serving a purpose, as the best in musical theatre should. This is a show that was clearly edited and discussed to make it the best version of itself it could be, which is probably a good part of why it struck me so deep (so rarely the case!). But also, back up, it’s NOT a nothing story. Itamar Moses (who never got his chance as hosting SNL as the Tony-contender book writers that season were obviously meant to) wrote a subtle, nuanced book that, without you aware in the moment, reminds us of the splendor in everyday life, in interpersonal relationships, in simply humans connecting with other humans. It’s so little and so much all at once, the most important thing in the world presented without a fuss. And the magic of it all is heightened by the fact that we only get a glimpse into each set of characters, each grouping of local Israeli with the Arab musicians they’re hosting. We don’t get full stories or neat conclusions, just glimpses, which makes it all even more relatable, realistic, and touching.
This London production gets bonus points for showing this town what proper representation in a cast can look like: there are actual Israels, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, playing these parts, so it feels authentic and not like, as happens so often here, caricatures. It’s a breath of fresh air to hear stories from the people they’d be about. Everyone is great, but so far into the run they don’t have the same magic connection to the music that the Broadway cast had. Mira Mesika plays Dina, the central character, as much as there is one in a true ensemble piece. Her stage presence and strong singing voice guide the show. Her “Omar Sharif” is gorgeous and when she belted the higher notes it. was. EVERYTHING. The heightened sense of desperation she revealed in her Dina really worked for her interpretation, and her dependable singing was a lovely contrast to Broadway’s Katrina Lenk, although she lacked what made Katrina’s performance so special – that strange mystical physical presence that Katrina used to almost dance through the show, heightening the sense of exoticism and magic.
It’s just different takes, for the most part, and not lack of talent. But I did find myself wishing for the Broadway takes. Our Tewfiq was authoritative and respectable, great especially at the end, but not heartbreaking to the extent Tony Shalhoub was with his adorableness and his sadness. But that’s why Tony is such a big star, that special extra something. Our Haled was fun and very good, but he and the director, I guess, didn’t notice the thing that made Haled on Broadway so effective with just one song that he won a Tony for it: Ari’el Stachel was doing exactly what the song was about – he was melting it. He was actually acting the lyrics: “it’s not about the conversation, the words are like your lips are reaching out to kiss the ears.” When I first saw him on Broadway, I was entranced because it was this otherworldly smooth legato energy coming directly into my ears like a nonstop beam melting the world away. That’s how he won a Tony for singing one song. This Haled was good but was singing the song, not doing the song. It was lovely and fun but wasn’t an act of revolution.
But again these are all tiny tiny differences between the productions, and this one is still fantastic, really served by the tiny stage and intimate theatre. Oh also I think Peter Polyinalltheshows’s iteration of the father character and his song “The Beat of Your Heart” were phenom, excellent stuff. The only slight slight almost a disappointment but of course not really but just a little, is the finale – the Telephone Guy’s song “Answer Me”. This is one of my favorite songs of all time and it lacked a bit of vocal heft here, the strength of the longing and the emotional expression that made Adam Kantor and then the whole cast together leave the audience in tears, feeling their loneliness but all together. It was a stunning theatrical moment that here is lovely and still heart-rending but not heart-breaking in its gloriousness. STILL, I say STILL, this is a wonderful production with a lot of heart and joy and love and I wish I could see it a dozen more times. I’m so glad this beautiful brave little toaster made it here.
INFORMATION
The musical is 100 minutes no intermission, which is…hard! Seriously folks, if you want to call your theatre-making accessible, 100 minutes no intermission is the MAX WE GO. Get over yourself.
The Donmar audience at my show was one of the worst I’ve ever seen! Maybe 2 masks, but we’re used to that by now. No, the horror came from the behavior. People all around talking, not whispering, literally the whole time. People next to us dancing in their seats (when? there are no dance songs!) and making out, it was really just so annoying and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re to blame for any bits of disappointment I felt. Also the man next to me who AFTER THE SECOND SONG, said to his friend “oh I guess this is a musical”. WAS THAT NECESSARY.
ALSO, unforch, the shows that encourage you to film the curtain call and maybe the finale, moves that we thought would placate the filmers, have instead led to people thinking they can film EVERY show’s finale and curtain call, which you can’t! People! You are here! Live! Experience the live theatre, why must you film everything? jfc put your gd phones away!
Speaking of jfc and gd, the Donmar cancelled the first preview of this run because of the Queen’s death which was…like…a month before the scheduled first preview. They said it pushed the rehearsal/tech process back a day. Which I guess is understandable, but if you have a sold out show, or heavily sold, and then you cancel one, shouldn’t you add in another show? So that people who are suddenly out of tickets – especially since they are likely the people most eager to see the show – can actually see it? I know too many fellow first-preview-ticket-holders who were only able to scrounge up like a terrible back of theatre seat in December. Add a f-ing performance if you cancel the first one, guys! What else could be fair? I’m still very angry even though I was not very affected, it’s the principle of the thing.
Wow this little info section made me really f-ing angry and hateful towards my fellow man, guess I have to see the show again and remember that they aren’t all monsters. But then the audience will prob be monsters, and then I’d be stuck in a vicious cycle! Just be better people!
