British Stereotype Overload: Afternoon Tea at the Ritz (Vegan Version!)by Randi / November 20, 2018Hadestown at London’s National Theatre: A Riveting Epic of Love, Death…and Capitalism
It’s Theatre Thursday! And it’s Thanksgiving, so today we are talking about a show I’m thankful for, quite possibly my favorite show right now, Hadestown.
As with our recently reviewed Twelfth Night, I’ve been waiting a while to see what everyone in New York has been raving about regarding this modernish musical retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. People said that if Hadestown had opened on Broadway last season, it would have beaten The Band’s Visit for the Tony, and I was like ‘Umm Kulthum is that possible?’ Turns out, much as I stan TBV, yes, it’s true. Hadestown is one of the greatest shows in years and years, and is destined a classic that will never cease to amaze.
It’s such a great concept. I’m a huge mythology buff, and I still remember the words to the title song from our fifth grade mythology play “It’s All Greek To Me” (forking excellent title, right?). My favorite line was “Zeus was their king and Hera was their queen/sometimes they were wonderful sometimes they were mean.” So true guys. And one of my many roles (I was a child star) in that play was Persephone’s best friend, so her myth has always been special for me. Combining the familiar mythology with an original score (and some mythological bendabouting), Hadestown seems pretty brilliant on paper, and turns out it’s extremely brilliant in real life. It’s the only musical in London producing such thrilling theatrical magic onstage that feels incredibly new and fresh, all while being not only an interesting take on a classic romance but also an allegory of capitalism vs. socialism. I KNOW.
Before we get to the show, I need to share a little glimpse into my brain. A few weeks before our performance, Husbo P asked what it was about. And I said “Oh it’s like a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice with all original music by Anais Nin!” Husbo P, being a man of knowledge, said, “Um, that can’t be right”, and I, being a woman of nonsense brain, said in an impression of Yente from Fiddler, “Right? Of course right!” and Husbo said, “Anais Nin has been dead for decades. Is it old music? Did she even write music?” and I, being stubborn, said “Well of course she wrote music because she wrote this!” and Husbo said “Well still, I think she died in the ‘70s…” and I said “Well this was written fairly recently.”
Reader, Anais Nin, a French-Cuban-American writer, indeed died in 1977. I meant Anais Mitchell.
So, with an original, enthralling score by Anais Mitchell, Hadestown tells of how Orpheus and Eurydice, two poor dreamers trying to make their way in this world (or maybe just find food), fall in love but get swept into the orbit of Hades, the god of the Underworld. They attempt to solve the age-old struggle of tragic love stories: the strength of love against the power of death. Okay that might be a direct quote from Once on This Island but it works here, except instead of just the power of death, O&E are also testing love’s strength against the god of death. Okay that’s in Once on This Island too. (Hey, as Hermes sings in the beginning, “it’s an old song, but we’re gonna sing it again.”) Well they mainly test love against doubt in that love, which here is even more insidious and devastating than death.
Our lovers meet in a café that could have begun La Boheme (too early for Rent). The vibe of the opening music is very jazzy, like old-fashioned steampunk-as-portrayed-in-the-Bad-Place with Hermes singing how “on the road to hell, there was a railroad line”. The buzz in the room is undeniable, the excitement created by this jazz-age throwback. It sets a fun and intriguing tone for the show, which rarely has a low point or misstep in score, book, direction, anything. Todd Sickafoose’s orchestrations are wonderful too. Okay I don’t really know too much about orchestrating but I needed to mention that last name because it’s how I imagine Samuel L. Jackson yelling on a plane if there were too many fools onboard. (I’M SICK A THESE MUHFU**ING FOOS ON THIS MUHFU**ING PLANE I’M SICKAFOOSE /end scene.)
As for that direction, as helmed by Rachel Chavkin, who staged my beloved Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway, Hadestown comes alive with great use of the space. I loved the efficient, effective use of the turntables and especially what’s in the middle of them. And at a few moments, Chavkin’s genius shines through with actually jaw-dropping brilliance, most notably during Hades’s powerful song “Why We Build a Wall”. The staging and sound mixing at this moment was the high point of the production. This is where Chavkin’s command of space, as we saw in Great Comet, shone the brightest (along with the bright lights). It’s a spellbinding performance of a riveting and relevant song. I couldn’t blink during this song, since it was the kind of theatrical magic you hope to experience a few times in your theatre-going career. The song, despite being written in 2010, feels like a direct response to the current political climate. The incredible staging of that scene was, to quote the Great Comet, “really beyond anything.”
Really, the whole show feels like a response to daily politics, and it’s continually surprising that it wasn’t written in the past week. Hadestown uses the well-known Orpheus tale and all the stories that swirl around Hades to weave a political allegory representing the evils of capitalism and the potential of socialism. It’s a remarkable thing to discern the layers in this musical, and realize it’s so much more than a retelling of a familiar love story. While it’s standard for theatre to respond to the politics of its age, it’s rare for a show to do so actually well, and while maintaining pure brilliance and beauty.
The material would stand with anyone, but this cast is truly off the charts flawless. As Orpheus, Reeve Carney (best known for not dying in Broadway’s Spider-Man) is ideal as the skinny white emo boy who thinks everything could be solved with one great love song (*cough* Roger from Rent *cough* (except unlike Roger’s “Your Eyes”, Orpheus’s love songs are actually good (good, they are insanely great))). Some people might say his voice is the weakest, but it’s like a reed, it’s thin but deceptively strong. He’s so well cast, and he deserves credit for carrying the show. No one has even close to his amount of stage time. As Eurydice, Eva Noblezada (who blew us away a few years ago as the newest Miss Saigon) is adorable and winning, although I wish her impressive voice got a song that actually showed it off to its full extent more that just the last bit of Wait for Me II (although, admittedly, holy crap, it’s my favorite 20 seconds in modern musical history). Patrick Page (also didn’t die in Spider-Man yayyy), with his truly otherworldly voice, seemingly coming from depths not of this earth, is the perfect Hades. Especially during “Hey Little Songbird”, his incredibly deep bass makes the predatory tinge of this song even more disturbing and upsetting. You can feel the lowest notes of his range in your soul, shattering any sense of calm you might have.
My favorite performances come from Amber Gray as Persephone and Andre de Shields as Hermes. Gray, with that unique raspy voice that somehow becomes clear and strong whenever she needs it to be, is a surprising Persephone, strong and opinionated after a long life spent between two worlds. We meet her at a point in her story much later than anyone has seen before. She brings down the house with her Act II opener “Our Lady of the Underground”, which will make you wish this show was running in rep with a one-woman show about Persephone.
But the coolest cat on that stage is legendary Andre de Shields (also known as the original Wiz) as Hermes, gallivanting between the mortal and divine realms as only Hermes can. And as only Andre can, he commands the stage with his joyful movement, his soulful singing, and his ability to command your attention even when he’s in the background.
The cast also includes a spectacular ensemble. Chavkin’s Great Comet cast raised the bar for diversity on stage, and here she is again doing what she does best: challenging the rest of the theatre world to do better. And it’s not just an issue of diversity in ethnicities – her shows are also the only ones to have diversity in body types, something that truly should be commended yet is rarely talked about.
This is the first show in a while that I can’t wait to see again. It’s emotionally exhausting to watch (I can’t imagine how it is to perform) but in a great way. You know I hate not having anything to complain about but this show is extraordinary. It is by far one of the most compelling and gorgeous scores in modern musical history. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, really.
INFORMATION
Hadestown is playing at the National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre until January 26, after which I hope it will be transferring to Broadway, where it is sorely needed.
Seating: The Olivier theatre is a big ol’ barn but there aren’t really any bad seats. It’s a huge semi-circle around the stage, so it feels like there are three sides of the stage to sit on. I chose the extreme stage right aisle in the stalls and it was a perfect view, but there are really bright lights that shine directly into your eyeline in the first 10 or so rows, so that sucked. Go farther up or more into the middle (which blows if you like aisles).
Stage door: All the leads came out and signed and took pictures except for Amber Gray (sob), who I believe does not ever stage door. Andre de Shields was the coolest, nicest person to ever talk to and it was honestly an honor.
Oh I do have a complaint: The show art pictured at the top is GORGE, yet the programmes (which you pay for here) are super boring black and white, just with the title printed and nothing else. I demand a sad-rose programme.
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Condensed, Silly Fun at Opera Undone: Tosca & La Boheme
How fun does it sound to see two of Puccini’s best operas performed in the same night? Okay it sounds long. But this new production of Opera Undone does just that – generally speaking. This new joint ticket of Tosca and La Boheme gives each classic work an hour max, sharing the gist and the highlights, and while that’s not the ideal way to enjoy classic opera, it is a whole lot of fun.
Perfect for short attention spans and newcomers to opera, this show was also hugely enjoyable for someone like me, who wrote a thesis on La Boheme and knows almost every word. Not that the words mattered here: both reimagined and reformed operas are performed in English, and especially in one case lots of liberties are taken with the ‘translation.’ Purists and those with sticks up their butts about opera might not appreciate it, but it’s a joy to see opera used in a flexible, fun way.
Tosca is performed first, so you know the warnings about loud gun shots are coming in this half, unless they seriously rewrote La Boheme (which they did but not in a murdery way). I’ve seen a traditional production of Tosca before but I don’t know it well enough to notice how much the story was changed here, if it was, aside from setting the scene during like a mob boss’s reign? I think? It was definitely not during Napoleon’s time, I know that much. Tosca is about an artist named Mario, who is keeping quiet the hiding place of his political prisoner friend Angelotti, and Mario’s girlfriend Tosca, a singer and a typical nagging annoying WOMAN that men in history have written thinking they’re being funny. Obviously, this means Tosca gets jealous easily too, because that’s how the women do. When she sees Mario’s latest painting, of a woman, she’s all WHO’S THAT WHY IS SHE SO PRETTY and you’re like girl, it’s a painting. I mean he’s an Italian man living in Rome you probably have realer problems to worry about. But the evil Scarpia, the chief of police, goads her to be jealous of the painting so you know he’s the bad guy straight away. He wants to bang Tosca and kill Mario, since he’s pretty sure the latter knows where Angelotti is hiding (it’s true though), so he has Mario arrested. Tosca goes to Scarpia to beg for Mario’s life and some shit goes down from there.
In this well-reduced version, the action begins with Mario painting, and oh my god, since there’s really no set (it’s in the tiny Studio 2 at Trafalgar Studios which is a tiny dark room) and this is in the round, he puts a painting’s frame around the neck of an AUDIENCE MEMBER. This chosen audience member is then pretty involved in the action for the next 20 minutes or so as Mario and Tosca and Scarpia examine and discuss the painting. IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS TO BE YOU, do not sit in the front rows and be a woman. Our participant didn’t seem to mind but my god my face would have burnt off from mortification-induced redness.
My Tosca this evening (it’s a rotating cast like a proper opera does), Honey Rouhani, was superb, so it’s a shame she didn’t have as much as usual to do. It seemed like Scarpia had an aria too many, and while strong, his voice began to feel grating. Maybe because he’s the bad guy and I was itching for him to get all murdered. Okay so Mario gets arrested, and Tosca goes to Scarpia and he’s like ‘I’ll let him go if we do the no-pants dance’ and Tosca’s all ughhh really ugh I mean I guess okay I gotta save Mario. Scarpia shows her a gun that he says has blanks in it, so she will have to pretend to shoot Mario and he will have to pretend to die, and then the guards will let her escape (with the body?? mmkay). I mean OBVIOUSLY YOU SHOULD TEST THE GUN FIRST, TOSCA, like shoot someone in the foot or something. Or the hand so you can run if it’s real? Shit what’s the best thing to shoot to test a gun? I mean Scarpia clearly! But she doesn’t. Once Scarpia tells her his plan for saving Mario, he then is all ‘okay it’s party time’ and she pretends to be letting him enter the bone zone but then she STABS HIM IN THE HEAD and it’s the MOST SATISFYING murder maybe of all time.
After killing a guy nbd she then goes to save Mario and tells him the plan of ‘blanks in the gun’ and OBVIOUSLY that was a lie and she kills him and then realizes it and kills herself. Yeah so Tosca is a full on murder-sui sitch. I love a good murder-sui but I’ve never seen one happen literally at my feet before – Studio 2 is a tiny little living room of a theatre and it was eek I was like ‘call the cops!’ ‘no not the regular cops!’ Anyway I enjoyed this condensed version a whole lot. There’s a lot of filler in the standard version that gets boring so I’m all in for this one.
It helps that Tosca isn’t one of my most beloved things like La Boheme is. I was nervous that they’d cut my favorite parts, which was undeniable and unavoidable because the whole thing is my favorite part. Luckily, they decided to change the story so much that it was like a whole different work, making me feel much less precious about it but still enjoying all the familiar melodies. I loved being able to compare this version to the original and noticing what clever little changes they made to allude to the original (not surprising considering how much work I’ve done comparing it to Rent). So La Boheme is about two friends, Rodolfo and Marcello, who are both poor artists. Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi, a poor young lady who has TB and is dying. Marcello has a complicated relationship with his ex-girlfriend Musetta. Just think Rent and you get the story.
Here, it was rewritten to be present day London, and Rod hears the famous knock on his door not from a girl who needs a light for her candle but from a guy who is answering Rod’s GRINDR invitation! I mean, it’s forking hilarious. The lyrics had the audience in stitches. It’s not all funny because this guy, who calls himself Mimi to keep it simple, is a drug addict whose eventual demise is from that addiction, but man do they cram in the humor. My favorite little quirk was having Marcello and Musetta (now Melissa because nobody modern is named Musetta, which is a shame, it just means little baby muse) struggle with polyamory. That’s so good. Again, Rouhani’s Melissa was the standout (luckily they included Musetta’s Waltz in this short version). The rewrites made it a lot of fun, and it was a clever modernization. Rewritten for a tenor, Mimi’s music doesn’t scratch the full itch of familiarity you (I) expect from her parts, so I was looking forward to listening to my recordings to hear the Rodolfo-Mimi sections in all their soprano-having glory. But even so, it’s a fun, cheeky version that even the old men who didn’t know what they were getting into with this show seemed to fully enjoy. I definitely recommend Opera Undone both for newbies and opera aficionados.
INFORMATION
Each act/opera is one hour and there’s a 15-minute interval. With a 19:45 (NB!) curtain, Act 1 ended at 20:48. The show ended at 22:00 EXACTLY which deserves a medal. Studio 2 is tiny and on the same floor as the Trafalgar Studios bar, which means the ladies room is very convenient.
It’s a Mad Mad Mad “Mad House” with Bill Pullman and David Harbour
One of the most infuriating shows I’ve ever seen ends this weekend, so be sure to catch it but take your anti-anxiety pills first! Or just walk open-mouthed first through Goodman Fields; it’s basically a fishbowl!
Theresa Rebeck REALLY knows how to get my blood pressure up! With those annoying English major vibes in ‘Seminar’, those darn stamps in ‘Mauritius’, that insane idea that Katharine McPhee would ever be a serious contender to play Marilyn Monroe in ‘Smash’, boy oh boy is she the master of making me feel like Larry David! In ‘Mad House’, it’s her biggest success yet, at least according to my vitals. And, amazingly, the anxiety I suffered was not just because leading-man-in-movies-I-grew-up-on Bill Pullman is now playing the FATHER of men who are OLDER THAN ME. Time, what is it!
Bill Pullman plays the piece of shite father of David Harbour, a man who I always assumed was about the same age as Bill but I guess ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ was longer ago than I thought. Bill as this father is a really really bad man, so you aren’t too sad that the action is about how he’s dying. He’s ungrateful to his son who is only trying to care for him as he dies, his son who feels things too strongly and has suffered with mental illness and forced treatments in the past for, ostensibly, seeing the world as it really is. Literally David’s entire life is caring for his father, as he has nothing else going on, but his father and siblings just brush him aside for being crazy and worthless and it’s INFURIATING.
As we meet David and Bill (character names here would just confuse you, right), a new home nurse for Bill is arriving. Her name is Lillian, and she is Black, so you know your anxiety is probably going to rise even more because it’s obvious that most of this Pennsylvania family is the reason the commonwealth isn’t safely blue. Lillian is so good, played by Akiya Henry, a necessary relief of a calming presence without getting too close to the (very popular lately especially for therapist characters!) trope of the Black woman magically there to solve the lead white characters’ problems. Her too tragic backstory made her easy to connect with and care for, which this show needed since everyone else makes you want to scream.
That ‘everyone else’ being David’s rich prick of a brother Nedward and his beyond monstrous sister Pam. They show up to determine who gets the big house when Bill dies, and like, they are very obvious about it. Bill knows that’s why they’re there, David knows, everyone knows and these two bellends are just fighting about how to make sure David doesn’t get anything, because he’s crazy (he’s not) (really) and they are so unbelievably greedy and unfeeling that it’s often hard to reconcile them with any semblance of real human beings. They talk openly about how to finagle things so they can get David committed again, like they did before, and my god, the impotent frustration of having other people able to do such things and decide you’re insane to the point that you don’t have agency over your own life or ability to show emotions is SO UNFAIR, the system is really so broken.
David’s deceased mother’s assessment of him – that he’s full of anger because he sees how the world really is – REALLY RESONATED with me, especially as we see more and more that his siblings, mainly his sister, have zero zero zeroooo redeeming qualities. Pam, in particular, has no arc, she is just a straight line that falls off a cliff at the end (in terms of visualizing the line being graphed; she doesn’t actually fall off a cliff, though I would happily eagerly excitedly push her off one). She is honestly the worst human I’ve ever seen depicted onstage. I feel like even Mitch McConnell has more redeeming qualities, which is saying a lot since he is the devil’s stomach cancer. Like he might poke his little turtle head out of his little shit-stained turtle shell and watch this play and be like, ‘fuck this bitch SUCKS’. She really does.
Nedward, the brother, is potentially? maybe? is this true? even worse because he’s a coward who seems to sometimes know the difference between right and wrong and care about that difference (unlike his sister), but he won’t stand up and do anything about it. And isn’t KNOWING BETTER but not ACTING BETTER even though you are ABLE TO the worst of all? Ned is Switzerland (and no, Switzerland wasn’t ‘neutral’ and if you still believe those lies you probably need to take a grown-up history class).
Bill, in the end, thankfully shows tiny little hamster-ball-sized (I just rewatched ‘The Heat’) signs of redemption at the end, unlike his POS daughter, which you’re like ‘thank f-ing GOD’ about because it’s hard to just hate and hate and hate so many people, it’s EXHAUSTING, please VOTE IN NOVEMBER. He was very convincing, and good I guess, but I just cannot accept that we are at the stage in this timeline where BILL PULLMAN is playing the father of a man older than I am. I mean, Bill Pullman. our romcom lovable doof! Sleepless! While You Were Sleeping! His being allergic to everything aged him (no they made him act and look suuuupes older than he actually is (I think/hope) so at least we have that to relieve our anxiety).
I’ve never identified more with a character than with David Harbour’s VERY angry, screamy, frustrated beyond belief with the state of humanity Michael (oh I guess I do remember his character’s name! a miracle), who he portrayed very well mainly by being David Harbour, who is just magnetic on the stage. Everyone thinks he’s insane because he gets loud and angry but he’s usually completely justified! Everyone around him is a piece of shit! His two siblings just want to lock him up so they can sell the house and split the profits in half instead of in thirds. They are literally garbage MONSTER people, so greedy and evil that they will commit someone to a (from the sounds of it, not fun uh TALL!) mental institution where he will continue to be gaslit. Sure he’s not perfect and he could use anger management classes but that’s not the same as needing to be involuntarily COMMITTED because he sees how f-ing horrible his family is! This f-ing sister kept his dying mother from seeing her favorite son one last time just because she was jealous that he was the favorite! OF COURSE SHE LOVED HIM MORE THAN YOU YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT YOU BLOOD-SUCKING MONSTER.
The evilness of the sister was so outrageous – and eventually so without any comeuppance or reprisal or remorse or any consequences or reckoning – that ultimately it was unsatisfying. Just too much frustration. I really actually thought/hoped that Michael might end up killing her. (There’s mention in the beginning of guns; Daniel says he suspects Michael has guns (it IS rural PA after all (also Ned at one point says Pennsylvan-eee-ya which is when I realized the actor wasn’t actually American (also dropped a ‘the’ before saying hospital) so otherwise he did a bang-up job (I think that is British for good), otherwise great accent work))) and Michael denies it, and I thought that that would come back in the end to show he actually DOES have guns, but he doesn’t and it didn’t, because as husband sadly said to me after, ‘the Chekhov play was LAST night.’
INFORMATION
As with most West End theatres, the facilities are a joke, with 3 ladies toilets for the upstairs (unsure of the downstairs sitch, wouldn’t be surprised if this was the only toilet for the whole theatre) and nooo room to stand anywhere on any level. L6, in the last row in house (the only circle) is IN THE AISLE so no one is in front of you and you have a clear runway to the bathroom, it’s just a splendid seat (although the people in the 5 person row with us had clearly only been to the panto before because they acted like this was the muhfucking children’s section – singing along when David sang Danny Boy???? saying “MMM HMMM” when the only black actor on the stage made a good point? total yikes, white boy.)
Also 6 pounds for programs. Y’all need Playbill over here yesterday.
2 Comments
Ok so I saw a headline about how this show is rlly rlly good but before I believed it I went here to see what you said first 😂
IT IS SO GOOD!