LIES at the Almeida: Like ‘The Big Short’ But I’m Christian Baleby Randi / August 23, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘It Happened in Key West’, which played at London’s Charing Cross Theatre this summer.
See how nice I’m trying to be nowadays with my wording? I could have said, like all the other critics, “this is not good”, but no, it’s actually “full of potential”. It’s because I’ve been watching ‘The Good Place’ so much, like over and over (BSE). Whoever said television can’t make you a better person was full of shirt. I want to talk about ‘It Happened in Key West’, even though the London production is now closed, because it has the ability to be a much better show if the creators put more work into it. I really believe that there is nothing but potential for this truly original romantic comedy musical (something that the boards really need right now) to be a success, but that’s if the creators treat the Charing Cross run as a test, learn what worked and what didn’t, and make the necessary improvements without being precious about protecting the work they’ve made thus far. The show needs new songs and a good dramaturg to nail the right tone instead of leaving it the wavering muddle it is at this stage. As it is, it’s not a bad show; it was quite entertaining. But it could actually be good.
See how nice I’m trying to be nowadays with my wording? I could have said, like all the other critics, “this is not good”, but no, it’s actually “full of potential”. It’s because I’ve been watching ‘The Good Place’ so much, like over and over (BSE). Whoever said television can’t make you a better person was full of shirt. I want to talk about ‘It Happened in Key West’, even though the London production is now closed, because it has the ability to be a much better show if the creators put more work into it. I really believe that there is nothing but potential for this truly original romantic comedy musical (something that the boards really need right now) to be a success, but that’s if the creators treat the Charing Cross run as a test, learn what worked and what didn’t, and make the necessary improvements without being precious about protecting the work they’ve made thus far. The show needs new songs and a good dramaturg to nail the right tone instead of leaving it the wavering muddle it is at this stage. As it is, it’s not a bad show; it was quite entertaining. But it could actually be good.
‘Key West’ tells the true story – I shirt you not, it is – of Carl Tanzler, or Count Carl von Cosel as he presented himself, a German radiologist/inventor/scientist with nine degrees (he tells you that a lot) who moves to Key West in the 1920s and falls in obsessive ‘love’ with a young Cuban woman named Elena. The young woman (who was married but her husband left her) comes to him with a bad cough, and unforch it’s tuberculosis in its late stages. At this time, TB was a death sentence (just ask Nikki K high-kicking it down at the Moulin Rouge), but Carl instantly became obsessed with Elena’s youthful beauty (he was hella old btw) and tried whatever he could to save her. Elena’s death did not kill Carl’s obsession, and so – gird your loins – he stole her corpse from her tomb and lived with it and cared for it as if it were his wife for SEVEN YEARS.
Can you imagine the smell.
Carl used lots of perfumes, waxes, varnishes, and other tricks to try to keep the corpse from, well, you know, and I guess some of it worked because SEVEN YEARS but man alive! (or not!) In the show, Carl tied the body to his tandem bicycle and would ride around town with it, pretending it was his new girlfriend. And I guess the townspeople just didn’t look too closely? It’s a weird forking story. I remember listening to a This American Life podcast about this story years ago so I knew what was coming, but hilariously, Husbo did not know the background. At the end of the show, the projection screen displays the photos of the real Carl and Elena. Seeing the old-timey photos of people who weren’t the actors, Husbo said “that makes me nervous that this wasn’t entirely fiction” and so I had to explain to him that no, we actually just saw a weird af musical about actual real-life necrophilia being presented as a love story.
And that’s the main problem with this show, that they sometimes remember to treat this as the bizarrely wacky madness that it is, but mostly they overly romanticize Carl’s actions and treat it as a love story that ‘sadly’ can’t last forever, forgetting I guess that it’s about criminal, horrifying, revolting necrophilia and tomb raiding and lots of other real weird stuff. The biggest issue is that it doesn’t know what tone it wants to strike or how to strike it. Sometimes it’s overwhelmingly maudlin, sometimes it’s bizarre and eerie, and sometimes it’s funny. This issue is not a surprise to me at all, since creator Jill Santoriello had the same problem with her Broadway musical “A Tale of Two Cities”. Granted, I got the first rush ticket for the first preview of that show (10 years ago!) and I sat front row center right behind the conductor, who I chatted with for a little, so I had a grand old time. But even in my giddy cloud I could tell that the lyrics I was hearing in the songs just didn’t make sense. I remember one actress with a big booming impressive voice singing about how she wanted to exact revenge for the death of her family…but the lyrics she was singing were angry in the wrong way, saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and so the message didn’t come across properly in the least. The whole show was like that, and that’s why it failed. Here too, the entire tone is unsettled and unclear, and that can kill a show.
I hate to say it because I think it is baller that Santoriello is one of only two women in history to write an entire show – book, music, and lyrics – on their own, but the creative process requires other minds to bounce ideas off of, because then the best ideas are used. In ‘Key West’, she had some book help from Jason Huza and Jeremiah James, but neither of them, from my research, has ever been involved in musical theatre before, so that’s not the best kind of collaborator for something like this show, which requires defined intentions and meticulous efforts in order to work at all, even more than other shows since the right tone is so important here.
And they really didn’t get the tone right. Like I said, sometimes the jokes landed, but often times they merely resulted in a ‘oh, that’s weird. Huh.’ The main proposal was that Carl and The Spirit of Elena actually loved each other, so when he was caught after their long ‘marriage’, it was sad because he couldn’t keep her. In the show, a judge dismisses some charge or other against him because ‘it was clear he really loved her’, and someone in the audience actually woo-hooed. You don’t woo-hoo at some creep getting away with long-term necrophilia!! WHAT ARE PEOPLE TODAY. With all the ghost-wedding (such ‘A Blessing on Your Head, Mazel Tov, Mazel Tov’ vibes in that scene) stuff, the endless reprises of the main “Undying Love” theme, and the sympathy shown towards Carl at the end, it’s clear that the creators wanted this to be a straightforward romance story, and it just can’t be.
The deviations from reality to add something to the story were entirely unnecessary, and caused more harm than good. I mean, did you hear what it’s about? You don’t need to add drama to this. For example, Elena’s sisters were portrayed as one-dimensional villainous evil step-sisters, blocking Carl from treating Elena even though it may have been helping, and instead letting a different ‘doctor’ experiment on her with harmful bleeding techniques in exchange for bribe money. Can these two characters really be that evil that they’d risk their sister’s life for money? They were extremely annoying and unsympathetic, yet it didn’t make me feel any more sympathy for Elena, which I feel was the intention. In fact, the family’s horribleness almost made it seem like Carl should take care of the corpse, which is not the message you want to send.
The cast was overall good, with American Wade McCollum as a strong Carl (and with his beard, eerily looking like the real one) and Alyssa Martyn as the lovely Elena. Both were good singers and seemed to be really committing to this material, so I wish it better served them. My favorite was Johan Munir as Mario, Elena’s brother in law who was sympathetic to Carl. He seemed to be the only family member with any kind of common sense so that might be why I liked him. And although the score had a couple catchy tunes, and some hilarious and clever lyrics, they need more of them.
With more work, I think it would succeed best with a purely comical take, because when it’s funny, it’s really funny, and with more precise direction a lot of the lines that were clearly intended to be funny would actually…be funny. A comical route would be especially apt because the story is absolutely bonkers, and trying to sentimentalize it too fervently renders it toothless and, more importantly, makes me uncomfortable. This is not a story to portray as a sweet love story; it’s not one, and trying to make it one is disturbing. And that’s one of the biggest missteps of the show as it is now. Instead of clearly showing that Carl is off his rocker and – lest we forget – guilty of a pretty significant crime, the entire ending paints him with an overly sympathetic brush, with all characters – including the judge, I mean come on – wishing that they could give the rotting corpse back to him so he could go on with his happy love story. Playing it this way, the show has trouble staying together or feeling at cohesive, kind of like Elena’s body after seven years, I imagine.
Can you imagine the smell.
Carl used lots of perfumes, waxes, varnishes, and other tricks to try to keep the corpse from, well, you know, and I guess some of it worked because SEVEN YEARS but man alive! (or not!) In the show, Carl tied the body to his tandem bicycle and would ride around town with it, pretending it was his new girlfriend. And I guess the townspeople just didn’t look too closely? It’s a weird forking story. I remember listening to a This American Life podcast about this story years ago so I knew what was coming, but hilariously, Husbo did not know the background. At the end of the show, the projection screen displays the photos of the real Carl and Elena. Seeing the old-timey photos of people who weren’t the actors, Husbo said “that makes me nervous that this wasn’t entirely fiction” and so I had to explain to him that no, we actually just saw a weird af musical about actual real-life necrophilia being presented as a love story.
And that’s the main problem with this show, that they sometimes remember to treat this as the bizarrely wacky madness that it is, but mostly they overly romanticize Carl’s actions and treat it as a love story that ‘sadly’ can’t last forever, forgetting I guess that it’s about criminal, horrifying, revolting necrophilia and tomb raiding and lots of other real weird stuff. The biggest issue is that it doesn’t know what tone it wants to strike or how to strike it. Sometimes it’s overwhelmingly maudlin, sometimes it’s bizarre and eerie, and sometimes it’s funny. This issue is not a surprise to me at all, since creator Jill Santoriello had the same problem with her Broadway musical “A Tale of Two Cities”. Granted, I got the first rush ticket for the first preview of that show (10 years ago!) and I sat front row center right behind the conductor, who I chatted with for a little, so I had a grand old time. But even in my giddy cloud I could tell that the lyrics I was hearing in the songs just didn’t make sense. I remember one actress with a big booming impressive voice singing about how she wanted to exact revenge for the death of her family…but the lyrics she was singing were angry in the wrong way, saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and so the message didn’t come across properly in the least. The whole show was like that, and that’s why it failed. Here too, the entire tone is unsettled and unclear, and that can kill a show.
I hate to say it because I think it is baller that Santoriello is one of only two women in history to write an entire show – book, music, and lyrics – on their own, but the creative process requires other minds to bounce ideas off of, because then the best ideas are used. In ‘Key West’, she had some book help from Jason Huza and Jeremiah James, but neither of them, from my research, has ever been involved in musical theatre before, so that’s not the best kind of collaborator for something like this show, which requires defined intentions and meticulous efforts in order to work at all, even more than other shows since the right tone is so important here.
And they really didn’t get the tone right. Like I said, sometimes the jokes landed, but often times they merely resulted in a ‘oh, that’s weird. Huh.’ The main proposal was that Carl and The Spirit of Elena actually loved each other, so when he was caught after their long ‘marriage’, it was sad because he couldn’t keep her. In the show, a judge dismisses some charge or other against him because ‘it was clear he really loved her’, and someone in the audience actually woo-hooed. You don’t woo-hoo at some creep getting away with long-term necrophilia!! WHAT ARE PEOPLE TODAY. With all the ghost-wedding (such ‘A Blessing on Your Head, Mazel Tov, Mazel Tov’ vibes in that scene) stuff, the endless reprises of the main “Undying Love” theme, and the sympathy shown towards Carl at the end, it’s clear that the creators wanted this to be a straightforward romance story, and it just can’t be.
The deviations from reality to add something to the story were entirely unnecessary, and caused more harm than good. I mean, did you hear what it’s about? You don’t need to add drama to this. For example, Elena’s sisters were portrayed as one-dimensional villainous evil step-sisters, blocking Carl from treating Elena even though it may have been helping, and instead letting a different ‘doctor’ experiment on her with harmful bleeding techniques in exchange for bribe money. Can these two characters really be that evil that they’d risk their sister’s life for money? They were extremely annoying and unsympathetic, yet it didn’t make me feel any more sympathy for Elena, which I feel was the intention. In fact, the family’s horribleness almost made it seem like Carl should take care of the corpse, which is not the message you want to send.
The cast was overall good, with American Wade McCollum as a strong Carl (and with his beard, eerily looking like the real one) and Alyssa Martyn as the lovely Elena. Both were good singers and seemed to be really committing to this material, so I wish it better served them. My favorite was Johan Munir as Mario, Elena’s brother in law who was sympathetic to Carl. He seemed to be the only family member with any kind of common sense so that might be why I liked him. And although the score had a couple catchy tunes, and some hilarious and clever lyrics, they need more of them.
With more work, I think it would succeed best with a purely comical take, because when it’s funny, it’s really funny, and with more precise direction a lot of the lines that were clearly intended to be funny would actually…be funny. A comical route would be especially apt because the story is absolutely bonkers, and trying to sentimentalize it too fervently renders it toothless and, more importantly, makes me uncomfortable. This is not a story to portray as a sweet love story; it’s not one, and trying to make it one is disturbing. And that’s one of the biggest missteps of the show as it is now. Instead of clearly showing that Carl is off his rocker and – lest we forget – guilty of a pretty significant crime, the entire ending paints him with an overly sympathetic brush, with all characters – including the judge, I mean come on – wishing that they could give the rotting corpse back to him so he could go on with his happy love story. Playing it this way, the show has trouble staying together or feeling at cohesive, kind of like Elena’s body after seven years, I imagine.
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Edinburgh Fringe Part 3: The Best of the Fest: “Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!”, “Bloody Elle”, “Learning to Fly”
We’ve made it the final edition of our Edinburgh Fringe round-up! Like Vanessa Williams before she hammed it up on a telenovela and learned to say “Maaaaark” haughtily (I’m rewatching Ugly Betty), I’ve saved the best for last. I enjoyed all the shows I crammed into my Fringe weekend (which you can catch up on in Part 1 and Part 2 (despite all the cursing I did enjoy everything)), but three shows stood out. Not only were they the best of the fest, they were some of the most moving, most well done, and/or most fun shows I’ve seen in years. YEARS, MARK. These are the gems that stood out, the ones that I truly hope have a long, wide-reaching run once they leave Enbra. (Look at me I’m local now.)
Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder! by Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones
I am not a fan of true crime anything – not the documentaries, not the serial podcasts (or the Serial podcast), not even the satirical (is it?) comedy (IS IT) ‘Only Murders in the Building’. I don’t even watch the news because I just don’t want to HEAR about MURDER. That line that Baby Apatow says in ‘Knocked Up’ – “I googled murder!” – is the only enjoyable thing in this whole genre for me. That is, until this musical. “Kathy and Stella” tells of two best friends who have a middling true crime podcast (who doesn’t!), but when their favorite author gets murdered, they become embroiled in the case, trying to solve the mystery while also getting the chance to blow up to superstardom (at least as far as murder podcasts go).
Despite the subject matter that normally gives me the heebies and the willies, the entire crowd was laughing the entire time, and I was leading the charge. The show is sensational! (I just finished Mel Brooks’ autobio and I feel like I just quoted him.) The two stars playing Kathy and Stella are equally hilarious and talented, with great singing voices and even better comedic timing. Their every gesture and facial expression was exactly attuned to their characters. So many little lines and looks were somehow hysterical. The whole five person ensemble shines as well, with each person getting a chance to shine, and just when you think you have a favorite, someone else steps forward and does something hysterical/sings something amazing/tells the best joke and steals the crown. I can’t even begin to recount all the times I CACKLED laughing, though I do remember just dying when they were in the police station and Stella said something about them being pigs. The crowd loved that, obvs, we’re good people.
There are so many bops in the score too. Nothing stood out as the sort of thing to become a classic showtune, but all the music was fun and fresh and enjoyable. It was just a blast. There’s a little dip in the momentum just after the half-way mark, when you kind of don’t believe that Stella would fabricate evidence to share with their social media followers, but that might have been just my own frustration at someone f-ing with the chain of custody and lying to allege someone else’s guilt. But overall, it was the strongest musical of the fest, and I’ve rarely seen an audience have more fun. My face hurt from laughing so much, and though I wouldn’t rush to buy the score, it was perfect for the experience. I can see this having a sold-out run at the Southwark.
INFORMATION: The show is playing in a circus tent (Roundabout at Summerhall) so the nearest toilets are a bit hard to find, upstairs in the school building behind the tent. (Just ask the staff, they’re milling around.) There are outdoor bars just outside with water pitchers – the Fringe venues are pretty good about having water pitchers! The show went 18 minutes past scheduled end time. It’s okay, it’s a treat. You’d think being outside in a circus tent would mean more fresh air and air flow but you would be mistaken.
Bloody Elle, by Lauryn Redding
Literally the only disappointment I can share about this gorgeous, moving, brilliant one-woman show is that I’m now learning the writer and performer is named Lauryn, and not Elle, and so I am guessing that it was not as autobiographical as it seemed. Why am I so sad that this heartbreaking personal tale might not be true, why did I want this lovely young woman to have actually suffered so much in real life for our entertainment? BECAUSE IT WAS BRILLIANT.
“Bloody Elle” is an incredibly honest and beautiful telling of a young girls’ first love with another girl. Elle, our heroine, works at Chips & Dips and is muddling through life until a new girl, Eve, joins the staff and turns her world upside-down. Their budding romance is conveyed believably, feelingly, emotionally, and we are there for every single inch of the roller coaster. Elle shares the tale with her expert storytelling, her powerful singing, and her uncanny ability to imitate a whole cast of deeply drawn characters. (I say imitate like I actually heard the real people, and am realizing that’s just the strength of Lauryn’s abilities. Each Chips & Dips employee was ON THAT STAGE. ‘Our Jack’ is my fave, obvs, hope he’s real more than anything.)
Some lyrics were a little hackneyed, whenever she was trying for more ‘impressive’ figurative language instead of sticking to simple but honest lyrics. Simple and true is always better than trying to sound smart. But I noticed that kind of thing only a few times, and for the most part the music, and all the writing, was like an arrow shooting straight for your heart. It was raw, and heartfelt, and she is such a strong performer that you have no choice but to jump in and feel everything with her. We laughed, we sobbed, we laughed, we really truly cried with her and felt her pain, and then laughed some more, and then felt hope, and then cried more, and so on. This is one of those shows that make you believe in the power of art. Just an amazing gem.
INFORMATION: This is playing in the Traverse theatre, the more profesh of Fringe venues, so it’s a comfortable regular-ish theatre space with big toilets and a big bar with several water pitchers.
Learning to Fly, by James Rowland
Without a doubt, ‘Learning to Fly’ is my favorite thing I’ve seen not only of the festival, but in a looooong time. This one-man casually set talk in a small anatomy classroom was one of the most flawless pieces of theatrical storytelling I’ve ever seen. I can’t get over how good this was. I said good like a IDIOT; this shit is AMAZING. This is up there on my list of favorite things, full stop. James Rowland is a STORYTELLER for the GOTTAM AGES. There are few things I don’t have at least one or two bits of constructive criticism for (okay I like to think I’m constructive but I acknowledge that sometimes I am just a b word.) But this? This shit was SHEER PERFECTION.
I honestly don’t know how to say anything else except yell (can you hear me I bet you can because I’m loud) about how great this is.
James tells the very-true-seeming-I-hope-it’s-true-it-seems-true-I-mean-of-course-it-is-but-Lauryn’s-got-me-second-guessing-everything-now story of when he was a boy and was forced to spend time with his scary older lady neighbor, who he was convinced was a witch, as all kids are of their older lady neighbors. As expected, their ‘relationship’ is stilted from his trepidation, as he spends the hours watching TV and she stays in the other room. Everything changes with one of the most vividly drawn tales of a bathroom incident gone wrong, when they are forced to let down their guards, stand in the same room together (the bathroom), and finally become friends. All of this is told so well, conveying all the emotions and excitement and fears you could possibly imagine, and we were having a lovely time.
And then James gets his old lady neighbor some ecstasy to lift her spirits, and the show kicks into another gear you had no idea was coming, and it is f-ing hilarious.
James plays all of our emotions like a fiddle. Like a damn FIDDLE. We were laughing, we were weepy, we were struck dumb, we were laughing again, we were puppets attached to the strings he controlled. The twists and falls and emotional turns never stop coming – from the hijinks you expect from a teenage boy trying to buy drugs in high school, to him suggesting this plan to her, to his fakeout of her reaction, to her dying, to her NOT dying actually, to her dying again, to him trying to get a hold of his own life as an adult, it’s all told so expertly, so warmly and lovingly, that I think I will have a hard time listening to anyone else try to tell a story ever. Does it have drugs? Does it have classical music on drugs? Does it have poop floating in a flooded bathroom? Does it have a woman who comes back from the dead and is high as a kite drinking with EMTs? then KEEP IT.
If you have the chance to hear James tell this story this weekend, you simply must. Hopefully he will get to tell this story in a venue more worthy of this superb piece of theatre in the future.
INFORMATION: The show is in this tiny room, an anatomy lecture hall, at the Summerhall venue which is just mind-boggling to me, like the biggest inverse ratio of venue quality to performance quality you could imagine. There are single toilets out in the hall (I mean it’s a school!) and the bar/cafe has water pitchers AND tiny vegan Ben & Jerry’s, if you can believe it. (IF I can believe it? Watch this: I believe it!) The show went 14 minutes over, the one time you’re grateful for that.
Barber Shop Chronicles at the Roundhouse: Uneven but Enjoyable
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Barber Shop Chronicles, at London’s Roundhouse theatre until August 24.
Last weekend, we trekked up to Camden to see the latest production of Barber Shop Chronicles (hard for me to remember that it is three words but one is not ‘the’), Inua Ellams 2017 play about the important role barbershops play in black male communities the world over. It makes sense, giving this location the theatrical treatment, considering that barbershops in certain neighborhoods can play the role of community center, home, church, public square, political stage, and more. The entertainment factor of the wide-ranging conversations is built-in; the challenge is putting these conversations together into a cohesive work, which Barber Shop struggles with. Making quick stops in London’s Peckham neighborhood and locations all over Africa, all on the same day, this cheery ensemble piece gives glimpses of what these community centers share despite their distance.
It sounds like a slam-dunk idea, and for most of the audience it was. The actors are entertaining and energetic, and the set design is wonderful – there’s a wire globe that (patchily) lights up with the action’s current location as it spins, and all the international hair salon ads hanging from the ceiling are also lit depending on which city we’re currently in. And, great for audience members with shorter attention spans, the fast pace from location to location keeps the material from getting bogged down. But, that rapid anecdotes-only pace also keeps it from developing into something more meaningful, a story you can sink into. And it would be one thing if the anecdotal set-up were trusted, but the creators tried that for the first half and then tried to dramatize the non-story for the second half, resulting in an inconsistent outcome.
That first half, where we dropped in on Peckham, Lagos, Accra, and more to briefly listen to what the men were discussing today, showcased brief anecdotes and easy jokes – exclamations, silly voices, the stuff that audiences eat up. Although they did cleverly establish that this was all happening on the same day, by having everyone discuss a big football match, the focus was clearly more on joking around. And the jokes felt cheap, if not offensive. I mean, clearly this show wasn’t written for me and I’m okay with that, but I’m not okay with jokes about every other group of people that felt more mean-spirited than not. One of the longer (still not long, but longer) bits in this first half has a guy tell the others about his friend with an autistic child who tends to make scenes in public, and how they were told to beat the autism out of her – and everyone, onstage and off, erupts into insane laughter. Is…is that funny? There are also lots of macho jokes about gay men and wearing down women who reject you, which felt very troubling. Again, I’m not the target demographic here, but I don’t think that matters when you’re joking about these topics. And if the excuse is that this was just showing how normal men talk in these places – you know, ‘locker-room’ talk – well then that’s definitely a problem.
Soon, the cheap jokes gave way to a sort of late-stage attempt to create dedicated characters and narrative, and by that point it felt unearned. We had a young Peckham man angry at his boss because he thinks he put his dad in jail for no reason, when obviously, you could guess from a mile away the father actually committed the crime and we were going to find out about with the boy, obviously, and then he was going to forgive the boss, obviously, and we were going to all witness the emotional ‘reconciliation’ that honestly would have been emotional if the rest of the show built towards any kind of emotion, but as is, it felt out of left field and the emotion was unwarranted. There’s another cross-continental emotional bridge they try to build between another Peckham youth and a man we met in one of the African shops, but again, with no such foundation established, no emotional groundwork laid with all the time they had, it’s a last-minute bridge to nowhere, an attempt at an emotional punch that doesn’t land.
Despite all my problems with the story, or lack thereof, the show still remains a decent time, an interesting look at this crucial hub of black communities. And even when the action onstage is negative, the show itself still feels imbued with an overall sense of optimism, which is valuable. That’s definitely helped by the pre-show dance party happening with the cast and any audience members wanting to join in the fun, establishing a jovial high that’s hard to bring down, for most of the audience.
INFORMATION
Barber Shop Chronicles plays at the Roundhouse Theatre in Camden until August 24.
The show began at 8:05pm and ended at 9:55pm. There is no interval.
The ushers made a big deal pre-show of telling each and every person (hence a suuuper slow entry to the theatre) that there was no readmission during the show, and if you got up from your seat you’d be resat further back, because it’s performed in the round and you’d be a spectacle. Despite this warning, people came in super late and walked up and down the aisles right to the stage level the entire time, so, I guess do what you want. Also be prepared for people doing whatever they want regarding phone use, as in, everyone is on their phones the entire time and you just have to accept it. We knew going in to just breathe and accept all the phones and not say anything to anyone nearby, but we were surprised at the constancy of full-volume conversations. So, if you go you have to let go of any qualms about theatre etiquette.
