How is London’s “School of Rock” Holding Up Two Years Later?by Randi / July 26, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘Consent’ in London’s West End, playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre until August 11.
The last time I was in London’s Harold Pinter Theatre was for the sublimely disappointing ‘Oslo’, which featured just as much screaming as ‘Consent’. However, the key difference is that the screaming in ‘Consent’ feels earned, and completely necessary. (Hey while you’re here open that ‘Oslo’ review in a new tab because it’s remarkable.) Also making this an entirely different experience? ‘Consent’ was riveting. This well written, incisive new play by Nina Raine made me feel miserable the entire time, but in a great way that good plays are supposed to. It’s timely (I don’t want to be the 1000th reviewer to mention the #MeToo movement in a review for this play but look I just did), it’s well acted, and it will make you feel like everything is hopeless and everyone is a monster and it’s best to just sit in the dark alone quietly for most of your life. Like a good play should!
‘Consent’ follows the lives of a group of barristers, probably in their late 30s, as they deal with their workload and their marriages and the fact that spoiler they are all terrible people. There are two married couples, one single barrister friend, and one outlier actress friend. The barristers joke about their cases – most are in crime – from the first person, i.e. “What have you been working on lately?” “Oh I’ve been killing pensioners, raping a few people” – things like that. Dark humor in people who work in dark fields is nothing new, a common coping mechanism. But to see it put so bluntly, so cavalierly, is an early shock into this play. And the joking doesn’t really seem to be a way for them to deal with all their feelings. They genuinely seem not to care about the awful crimes they’re arguing. And sure you can’t take everything in work personally or emotionally, but the complete lack of empathy is a vital look into their humanity, which informs how they try cases. Of course, the worst-seeming men at the start are the defense attorneys.
Now, it goes without saying that the accused need to have representation, and fair representation at that, to promote their best interests in court and to serve justice overall. Defense attorneys are important and necessary to our criminal justice system. (I’m conflating US and UK law in this area because it’s similar enough.) But defense attorneys for accused rapists are a special breed. I have witnessed a lot of rape trials, a lot a lot, and during an internship for a public prosecutor I was involved in a lot of those trials. So I think it’s fair to say I’m more of an expert than the average person on the legal aspects of this play. And Nina Raine has nailed the coldness, the sickening twisting of words, the unfair focus on negligible details that every defense attorney I’ve seen in a rape case will employ. It’s hard to think about, but most of them were pure evil. And I really mean those words. The worst of humanity I could ever imagine have been in those court rooms with me. I remember a case that was lost because the defense attorney got the jury to laugh at a gay witness, the roommate of the rape victim. He kept making gay jokes and ‘prancing’ about when he repeated parts of the witness’s testimony, and since the judge and jury were some of the many, many shitty people on this planet, they thought it was hilarious and ‘voted’ for the funny lawyer. It’s not an issue of putting up the best case for their client, which is their job. It’s that they seem to revel in the unnecessary, unsettling glee they find in demolishing already fragile witnesses (victims), in using their words and their trauma against them to prove a point – that it doesn’t matter if you were raped; all that matters is whether you are presentable, well spoken, and completely faultless in every aspect of your life. And it’s definitely not about getting at the truth, which is rarely the point of any trial.
And ‘Consent’ captured this ease of evil more than any other work I’ve seen try to. Quickly, the marriages are revealed to be on shaky ground, which is not surprising when dealing with people without the ability to empathize. Ed, our main man (Stephen Campbell Moore, terrific and terrifying), is alarming in his calculated, supremely logical look at the world, which works to win him cases but unsettles his wife Kitty (the excellent Claudie Blakley (and yes that’s spelled right I know the e and the l look like they should be swapped but alas I cannot change her name)). He’s the guy who uses logic to kill empathy and truth when it doesn’t make enough logical sense for him, and he values dispassionate logic over the truth when said truth is the kind that demands an emotional response. His absolute lack of empathy struck me right to my core, and watching him both at work and at home made me feel the same powerless yet overwhelming rage I would feel in court. I was glad when Kitty would yell at him the things I wanted to yell out (and from a front row seat, I really almost did), and I was glad that she seemed to have the right footing in such a difficult relationship. But the second act proves that she’s not the moral savior I wanted her to be, which is both disappointing and more realistic. No one is perfect, although it in this play it’s more like everyone is actually a shithead.
The other married barrister couple is Rachel (Sian Clifford) and Jake (Adam James, who my brain kept trying to make into Michael C. Hall). Jake is revealed early on to be cheating on his wife, but he’s not sorry for his actions, only sorry he got caught. He’s very clear on that and doesn’t understand why anyone would fault him for his stance. And he’s the kind of guy that would frame his argument in such a way that it would leave you without a response, almost thinking that maybe he was right – the kind of guy that’s a good barrister, and an asshole. Rachel is the one on the other side, a prosecutor, so I also put the unfair burden on her that I initially put on Kitty – that they’d be my female voices of reason against the men. Of course, people are more complicated than that, and she also let me down, with her second act opinions when it comes to the title of the play. White women, am I right!
The other friends are Zara (Clare Foster), the goofy (pitch perfect) actress friend, and Tim (Lee Ingleby), the awkward barrister who seems hapless but ‘nice’, but shows he sucks just as much. That everyone kind of sucks at times and you want to punch them all at times and you also just see them as normal sometimes all makes ‘Consent’ so convincing, and everyone so real. They’re all people you probably know in real life.
But the best part of the play is when it actually shows the rape trial, where Ed is defending and Tim is prosecuting. Heather Craney plays the victim, Gayle, and she is everything. I was crying through most of the exquisite first act because of how accurate it all was. Gayle meets Tim literally two minutes before the trial starts. She knows nothing about what’s going to happen or what she’s supposed to do because no one ever cared to inform her. It is the prosecution’s job to make sure the victim knows what to do and does it well, since she is the main part of the state’s case. But just because they should ensure that she is fully informed and ready to testify doesn’t mean it always happens. And Tim’s failure here is an example of that. Busy lawyers who think they have a handle on the facts, and who don’t see any value in devoting time and effort to such a case, might only meet the confused victim out in the hallway before the trial starts, where she might hear for the very first time that anything not in her initial statement to the police, made in the aftermath of debilitating trauma, is inadmissible. And yes that’s a bad lawyer who would do that, but it doesn’t stop it from happening – or being allowed to happen. Such is the case with Tim and Gayle. The short exchange they have says so much about the system: Gayle asks if Tim’s her lawyer, and he laughs that no silly, he’s the lawyer for the Crown. Gayle asks who her lawyer is, and Tim has to explain that she doesn’t have one, she’s just a witness against the accused. But he has a lawyer, right? Well of course he does. And his lawyer is ready to tear down everything the unprepared Gayle says, the silly woman who thought that the truth would be all that was required of her.
The genius of this play is that the failings of the judicial system reflect the personal failings in the people who work in the law. And this makes sense, after all, since society’s structures and systems will reflect the society that made them. This is the most depressing thought from the play, that the systems that are supposed to serve us really won’t improve if humanity doesn’t improve.
I wish that they kept up this theme in the second act, which is much weaker than the first as it mainly focuses on the relationships of the characters and puts the legal stuff aside. I’m obviously biased in my desire for more of the interplay between the two, but when the interpersonal relationships all blow up and there’s so much screaming and crying and so much emotion (so much), it becomes overwhelming. It would have been better, and easier to take in, if it were tempered with more glimpses into the law to provide small respites from all the heated arguments.
But as it is, ‘Consent’ is a really brilliant play. It’s not the GREATEST THING EVER, as I was left wondering at intermission whether it just might be, but it’s quite well done and so well written. The acting was so effective, I felt like all the trauma was my own. All these people are terrible, yet normal. Which scares me. Is everyone a monster? Does every person cheat? Like every single one? Because that’s what this play is telling me. I mean I know I’m mean on this blog sometimes (because it’s mine and I can do what I want with it) but I’m not a monster, I believe victims, and I don’t think I would find joy in emotionally torturing someone I love. But that’s just me I guess!
INFORMATION
The play is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until August 11. It runs about two and a half hours, with the first act almost 90 minutes and the second much shorter. There was an announcement at the start that one set piece was malfunctioning and so stagehands would be onstage more than usual to move sets, but it was all just loose furniture so I’m not sure how it would have been done without stagehands. Anyway go see it.
AUDIENCE
Typical English play audience, skewing older with lots of chatter among the older ladies. “Oh dear now he’s gone and done that.” “Oh dear he said it he finally said it.” SHUSHHHHHHHHHH. The very old man next to me asked if I was enjoying it at the interval and I said yes it’s quite good and he asked, “are you a lawyer?” and I said “yes?” and he said “I thought you might be!” and now every second of my life will be spent thinking, how…?
Now, it goes without saying that the accused need to have representation, and fair representation at that, to promote their best interests in court and to serve justice overall. Defense attorneys are important and necessary to our criminal justice system. (I’m conflating US and UK law in this area because it’s similar enough.) But defense attorneys for accused rapists are a special breed. I have witnessed a lot of rape trials, a lot a lot, and during an internship for a public prosecutor I was involved in a lot of those trials. So I think it’s fair to say I’m more of an expert than the average person on the legal aspects of this play. And Nina Raine has nailed the coldness, the sickening twisting of words, the unfair focus on negligible details that every defense attorney I’ve seen in a rape case will employ. It’s hard to think about, but most of them were pure evil. And I really mean those words. The worst of humanity I could ever imagine have been in those court rooms with me. I remember a case that was lost because the defense attorney got the jury to laugh at a gay witness, the roommate of the rape victim. He kept making gay jokes and ‘prancing’ about when he repeated parts of the witness’s testimony, and since the judge and jury were some of the many, many shitty people on this planet, they thought it was hilarious and ‘voted’ for the funny lawyer. It’s not an issue of putting up the best case for their client, which is their job. It’s that they seem to revel in the unnecessary, unsettling glee they find in demolishing already fragile witnesses (victims), in using their words and their trauma against them to prove a point – that it doesn’t matter if you were raped; all that matters is whether you are presentable, well spoken, and completely faultless in every aspect of your life. And it’s definitely not about getting at the truth, which is rarely the point of any trial.
And ‘Consent’ captured this ease of evil more than any other work I’ve seen try to. Quickly, the marriages are revealed to be on shaky ground, which is not surprising when dealing with people without the ability to empathize. Ed, our main man (Stephen Campbell Moore, terrific and terrifying), is alarming in his calculated, supremely logical look at the world, which works to win him cases but unsettles his wife Kitty (the excellent Claudie Blakley (and yes that’s spelled right I know the e and the l look like they should be swapped but alas I cannot change her name)). He’s the guy who uses logic to kill empathy and truth when it doesn’t make enough logical sense for him, and he values dispassionate logic over the truth when said truth is the kind that demands an emotional response. His absolute lack of empathy struck me right to my core, and watching him both at work and at home made me feel the same powerless yet overwhelming rage I would feel in court. I was glad when Kitty would yell at him the things I wanted to yell out (and from a front row seat, I really almost did), and I was glad that she seemed to have the right footing in such a difficult relationship. But the second act proves that she’s not the moral savior I wanted her to be, which is both disappointing and more realistic. No one is perfect, although it in this play it’s more like everyone is actually a shithead.
The other married barrister couple is Rachel (Sian Clifford) and Jake (Adam James, who my brain kept trying to make into Michael C. Hall). Jake is revealed early on to be cheating on his wife, but he’s not sorry for his actions, only sorry he got caught. He’s very clear on that and doesn’t understand why anyone would fault him for his stance. And he’s the kind of guy that would frame his argument in such a way that it would leave you without a response, almost thinking that maybe he was right – the kind of guy that’s a good barrister, and an asshole. Rachel is the one on the other side, a prosecutor, so I also put the unfair burden on her that I initially put on Kitty – that they’d be my female voices of reason against the men. Of course, people are more complicated than that, and she also let me down, with her second act opinions when it comes to the title of the play. White women, am I right!
The other friends are Zara (Clare Foster), the goofy (pitch perfect) actress friend, and Tim (Lee Ingleby), the awkward barrister who seems hapless but ‘nice’, but shows he sucks just as much. That everyone kind of sucks at times and you want to punch them all at times and you also just see them as normal sometimes all makes ‘Consent’ so convincing, and everyone so real. They’re all people you probably know in real life.
But the best part of the play is when it actually shows the rape trial, where Ed is defending and Tim is prosecuting. Heather Craney plays the victim, Gayle, and she is everything. I was crying through most of the exquisite first act because of how accurate it all was. Gayle meets Tim literally two minutes before the trial starts. She knows nothing about what’s going to happen or what she’s supposed to do because no one ever cared to inform her. It is the prosecution’s job to make sure the victim knows what to do and does it well, since she is the main part of the state’s case. But just because they should ensure that she is fully informed and ready to testify doesn’t mean it always happens. And Tim’s failure here is an example of that. Busy lawyers who think they have a handle on the facts, and who don’t see any value in devoting time and effort to such a case, might only meet the confused victim out in the hallway before the trial starts, where she might hear for the very first time that anything not in her initial statement to the police, made in the aftermath of debilitating trauma, is inadmissible. And yes that’s a bad lawyer who would do that, but it doesn’t stop it from happening – or being allowed to happen. Such is the case with Tim and Gayle. The short exchange they have says so much about the system: Gayle asks if Tim’s her lawyer, and he laughs that no silly, he’s the lawyer for the Crown. Gayle asks who her lawyer is, and Tim has to explain that she doesn’t have one, she’s just a witness against the accused. But he has a lawyer, right? Well of course he does. And his lawyer is ready to tear down everything the unprepared Gayle says, the silly woman who thought that the truth would be all that was required of her.
The genius of this play is that the failings of the judicial system reflect the personal failings in the people who work in the law. And this makes sense, after all, since society’s structures and systems will reflect the society that made them. This is the most depressing thought from the play, that the systems that are supposed to serve us really won’t improve if humanity doesn’t improve.
I wish that they kept up this theme in the second act, which is much weaker than the first as it mainly focuses on the relationships of the characters and puts the legal stuff aside. I’m obviously biased in my desire for more of the interplay between the two, but when the interpersonal relationships all blow up and there’s so much screaming and crying and so much emotion (so much), it becomes overwhelming. It would have been better, and easier to take in, if it were tempered with more glimpses into the law to provide small respites from all the heated arguments.
But as it is, ‘Consent’ is a really brilliant play. It’s not the GREATEST THING EVER, as I was left wondering at intermission whether it just might be, but it’s quite well done and so well written. The acting was so effective, I felt like all the trauma was my own. All these people are terrible, yet normal. Which scares me. Is everyone a monster? Does every person cheat? Like every single one? Because that’s what this play is telling me. I mean I know I’m mean on this blog sometimes (because it’s mine and I can do what I want with it) but I’m not a monster, I believe victims, and I don’t think I would find joy in emotionally torturing someone I love. But that’s just me I guess!
INFORMATION
The play is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until August 11. It runs about two and a half hours, with the first act almost 90 minutes and the second much shorter. There was an announcement at the start that one set piece was malfunctioning and so stagehands would be onstage more than usual to move sets, but it was all just loose furniture so I’m not sure how it would have been done without stagehands. Anyway go see it.
AUDIENCE
Typical English play audience, skewing older with lots of chatter among the older ladies. “Oh dear now he’s gone and done that.” “Oh dear he said it he finally said it.” SHUSHHHHHHHHHH. The very old man next to me asked if I was enjoying it at the interval and I said yes it’s quite good and he asked, “are you a lawyer?” and I said “yes?” and he said “I thought you might be!” and now every second of my life will be spent thinking, how…?
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“Pippin” On Broadway Does More Than Magic
If your first introduction to the classic musical “Pippin” was a high school production, as mine was, then you probably have no desire to see it again. I know that’s how most people who saw our subpar production felt, and it’s also how I felt for a while, before I listened to the recording and learned what a spellbinding and deep show this is. If you haven’t had your opinion changed yet, man alive you need to high-step it to Broadway ASAP and get your mind blown. Because the current revival of the Stephen Schwartz/Bob Fosse is truly producing magic far beyond what I could have hoped for. With Diane Paulus’s concise direction and inspired reimagination in a circus setting, the show is more enjoyable and more entertaining than ever.
“Pippin” is a weird show. Let’s just get that out right off the bat. Honestly, when I was IN it I had no idea what was happening. The show follows the post-academic trials and tribulations of the main character, Pippin (played by the adorable Matthew James Thomas), as he tries to find fulfillment upon entering the real world. That’s totally the shared human experience in the first world, right? Well, Pippin is also the son and heir of King Charlemagne. Yeah, it’s like the Middle Ages and these two characters are based on real people (at least in name). But historical accuracy is thankfully tossed aside. Our hero is led by the Leading Player (Tony-winner Patina Miller all Fosseed up) of a troupe through various shenanigans, both trifling and tragic, in his quest for happiness.
“Pippin” is a weird show. Let’s just get that out right off the bat. Honestly, when I was IN it I had no idea what was happening. The show follows the post-academic trials and tribulations of the main character, Pippin (played by the adorable Matthew James Thomas), as he tries to find fulfillment upon entering the real world. That’s totally the shared human experience in the first world, right? Well, Pippin is also the son and heir of King Charlemagne. Yeah, it’s like the Middle Ages and these two characters are based on real people (at least in name). But historical accuracy is thankfully tossed aside. Our hero is led by the Leading Player (Tony-winner Patina Miller all Fosseed up) of a troupe through various shenanigans, both trifling and tragic, in his quest for happiness.
As a high school student, I didn’t really give the plot much thought; I was too busy trying not to forget blocking and make a fool of myself. But the Broadway production clarifies all of the issues that we kind of glossed over. The troupe of players finally makes sense, because Pippin is an actor in the show as well, a member of the circus troupe presenting the story of Pippin for its audience. We learn in the beginning of the show that the actor playing the character Pippin in the production-within-the-show is playing the role for the very first time, allowing for some humorous and telling missteps and changes throughout the show. He has some trouble remembering cues and, more importantly, some trouble following the demands of the increasingly scary Leading Player. To help Pipster find his calling, she leads him to war, to sex, to murder, to the throne, and to a simple country life with a fine woman (Catherine, played by Rachel Bay Jones), which his script says he’s supposed to leave in order to achieve one final, blazing moment of glory, a suicidal idealization that the disturbing Leading Player and her minions crave. But the actress playing Catherine has trouble following the script as well, and the two actors thwart their troupe in favor of a semblance of happiness together. It’s a remarkably complex book that I never fully appreciated until this production.
Matthew James Thomas, Pippin
Matthew James Thomas is a lovely Pippin, and Patina Miller – fantastic, charming and yet totally frightening – is sensational as the Leading Player. But the supporting players steal every scene. Terrance Mann as Charlemagne is a riot, landing more jokes that a normal person would find within his lines and evoking the proper balance between powerful monster and witless kook. Mann’s real-life wife, Charlotte d’Amboise, plays Charlemagne’s conniving, evil wife Fastrada, determined to make her son Lewis the next king, even if it means manipulating her husband and her stepson (Pippin) into terrible deeds, including murder. Fastrada also has the most unbelievable costume changes I’ve seen since “Cinderella”, accomplished literally in seconds with no possible explanation (magic).
As Pippin’s hilariously inappropriate grandmother Berthe, Tovah Feldshuh gets tons of laughs, gasps, and people to sing along with her. I saw one of her first performances after taking over the role from Andrea Martin. She was wonderful, but I can’t help regretting that I didn’t see the much more vivacious comic Martin in her Tony-winning turn. Though Berthe’s onstage time is short, it’s an incredibly physically demanding role (in this high-flying production), especially for an older person, so Martin’s short stint is understood. And Feldshuh’s take is very impressive, especially her trapeze skills. You won’t believe what she is capable of at age 63, and it will probably make you feel bad about your inferior biceps.
As Pippin’s hilariously inappropriate grandmother Berthe, Tovah Feldshuh gets tons of laughs, gasps, and people to sing along with her. I saw one of her first performances after taking over the role from Andrea Martin. She was wonderful, but I can’t help regretting that I didn’t see the much more vivacious comic Martin in her Tony-winning turn. Though Berthe’s onstage time is short, it’s an incredibly physically demanding role (in this high-flying production), especially for an older person, so Martin’s short stint is understood. And Feldshuh’s take is very impressive, especially her trapeze skills. You won’t believe what she is capable of at age 63, and it will probably make you feel bad about your inferior biceps.
Rachel Bay Jones
But my favorite supporting player by far was Rachel Bay Jones as Catherine. This is usually such a thankless role, but she brought it to new life with exceedingly smart timing, varied but meaningful voices, and a heightened clarity with which she and Patina, as her character’s director, make their disagreements about the script known. She deepened Catherine into a complex player rather than the humdrum, nice lady usually seen. And she absolutely killllled every line. She was hysterical. I really was in shock at how funny she made the role, and how heartbreaking at the same time. I want to see it again primarily because of her.
Well, I also want to see it again in large part because of the acrobatics. They are ASTOUNDING. Coming to Broadway mostly from the French acrobatic troupe Les 7 Doigts De La Main, the acrobats in the ensemble are constantly performing the most incredible gymnastic acts left and right that will leave you breathless. I gasped several times, and the woman next to me often exclaimed “No!! Ahh!!” as she watched them do what human bodies should not be able to do. They are truly magical.
Speaking of magic, there’s a reason the opening number is called “Magic To Do”. Crazy illusions (not tricks; tricks are something whores do for money) pepper the entire show, from two-second costume changes to a magic box that several characters somehow emerge from to an Act I wonder involving Charlemagne’s body that I still cannot stop wondering about. How on earth did they accomplish these feats?!
“Pippin” in its current incarnation is one of the most magical productions I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen everything). The excellent score by Stephen Schwartz is sung to perfection. I only had a few issues with this show. Firstly, in the chorus of “Glory”, the ensemble sings “Shout it out, from the highest tower, shout it out, in the darkest hour”…but they whisper it most of the time! It’s like reading the word of a color in a different color. Like YELLOW. See? It messes with your mind! Shout it out! Also, for some reason “War is a Science”, Charlemagne’s big number, wasn’t as much fun as it should have been. Despite the increasingly fast pace (to the point where it’s so fast you can’t understand the words), it didn’t feel nearly as boisterous as it should have.
Honestly, those are the only gripes I had with this production. It was incredible, and if you have the chance to see it, SEE IT. And take me, because I need to see it as many times as possible. It’s that good.
Well, I also want to see it again in large part because of the acrobatics. They are ASTOUNDING. Coming to Broadway mostly from the French acrobatic troupe Les 7 Doigts De La Main, the acrobats in the ensemble are constantly performing the most incredible gymnastic acts left and right that will leave you breathless. I gasped several times, and the woman next to me often exclaimed “No!! Ahh!!” as she watched them do what human bodies should not be able to do. They are truly magical.
Speaking of magic, there’s a reason the opening number is called “Magic To Do”. Crazy illusions (not tricks; tricks are something whores do for money) pepper the entire show, from two-second costume changes to a magic box that several characters somehow emerge from to an Act I wonder involving Charlemagne’s body that I still cannot stop wondering about. How on earth did they accomplish these feats?!
“Pippin” in its current incarnation is one of the most magical productions I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen everything). The excellent score by Stephen Schwartz is sung to perfection. I only had a few issues with this show. Firstly, in the chorus of “Glory”, the ensemble sings “Shout it out, from the highest tower, shout it out, in the darkest hour”…but they whisper it most of the time! It’s like reading the word of a color in a different color. Like YELLOW. See? It messes with your mind! Shout it out! Also, for some reason “War is a Science”, Charlemagne’s big number, wasn’t as much fun as it should have been. Despite the increasingly fast pace (to the point where it’s so fast you can’t understand the words), it didn’t feel nearly as boisterous as it should have.
Honestly, those are the only gripes I had with this production. It was incredible, and if you have the chance to see it, SEE IT. And take me, because I need to see it as many times as possible. It’s that good.
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!
