Equus at Theatre Royal Stratford East: Insanity Beyond Reproachby Randi / March 19, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, playing at the Young Vic until April 6.
I love going into shows blind, knowing as little as possible about the plot or even what type of show it is. With Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, I have never been so surprised by a show’s subject matter. Even though the play is from 2000, I managed to miss it the first time-round (‘twas a child) and so with that intriguing title, my brain assumed it was about trains, and probably Jesus. It is not about trains, though it is sort of about Jesus, or religion in general. What Jesus, A Train! (best fake title) really is about is the horrors of the United States prison system, a subject that needs to be spoken about more and in harsher words. This play, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, definitely understands the need to denounce the broken system, but the result is more like a set of speeches than a play.
That’s great for actors preparing for auditions, since the monologues in this show are often powerful and seem important, perfect for showing off out of context. But it’s not great for a cohesive drama, with a plot, with a dramatic purpose. It’s two hours of monologues. Even the ‘dialogue’ between characters is, if you look closely, really a monologue followed by a one word response, lather rinse repeat. With this composing the show, you see that Guirgis had a lot of important things to say, a lot a lot, but without fitting these thoughts into a structured drama, it’s unclear what he’s actually saying.
As for the thin narrative, it’s about a young man who is imprisoned for shooting a despised cult leader, an act of violence that by all accounts is warranted, but vigilante justice isn’t rewarded when the perpetrator is a man of color. Following the imprisonment and trials of this young man, Angel Cruz, we see – no, we are told – how broken the American justice system is, how awful prison is, how unhinged prison guards are. This is all true, if not novel. But then Angel’s plight isn’t simply due to the system; it’s due to his shitty lawyer, Mary Jane Hanrahan, who shows off several times how bad a lawyer she is, with her most egregious, to me, mistake being her failure to share an offered plea deal with her client (I mean, literally gtfo). She also instructs him to lie without mincing her words, as you normally do, such that Angel breaks down in court and incriminates her and gets her disbarred. Which she deserves, sure, but why didn’t he get a mistrial? Why didn’t the court grant him another lawyer and trial? Why does Mary Jane also have SO. MANY. MONOLOGUES? The b.s. of the Mary Jane business was distractingly annoying.
So Angel is in Rikers with an amiable prisoner played by Oberon KA Adjepong. Oberon, as I’ll refer to him because I can’t remember the character’s name and there’s no way in hell it’s better than Oberon, is terrifying yet charismatic, the mark of a true serial killer – which, it turns out, he is! Oberon is hell-bent on saving Angel’s soul by getting him to find Jesus, as he himself has during his incarceration, and the two convicts have long, long-winded monologue-fights about what it means to seek forgiveness, what it means to find god, why it’s important. There are some nice thoughts bandied about in these scenes, but overall, the content is unfocused and unconvincing. Lucius (ah that’s his name! not as good as Oberon!) WAS A SERIAL KILLER. I don’t care how much you pray to god, you don’t deserve forgiveness. You joke still about how you killed more than eight people but they only caught you for eight, ha ha, and how some of them were white so they don’t count, ha ha, and you want to convince us that you deserve any semblance of forgiveness? Give me a g-d break! Are we supposed to connect with his rants about forgiveness and religion? Are they supposed to make us go, ‘hm that really makes you think’? Because instead, his monologues successfully make you agree that he deserved to die in prison. I guess all the Jesus talk could have been an interesting comparison between the lunatic killer’s belief that he’s going to be saved versus the kinder, gentler convict’s refusal to think that way, but what comes across is mere proselytizing that doesn’t land. Oberon was a captivating performer, save for the several moments he got tongue-tied, but with endless monologues to memorize, that’s forgivable, unlike the character he’s playing.
One of the worst, WORST, trends in London theatre this past year, is on full parade at Jesus, A Train. The Young Vic and director Kate Hewitt have decided to deafen, and annoy, its patrons by marking scene changes with a BANG! And I mean a loud forking BANG! I don’t know who decided this was the cool way to change scenes in London recently, but hear me now, fools: it is not. It doesn’t jar the audience in a thoughtful way, if that’s what you were going for; it doesn’t demarcate the difference between drama and reality, if that’s what you were going for; it doesn’t remind the audience of all the world’s troubles in a visceral way, if that’s what you were going for. All it does is forking PISS US OFF. It doesn’t help that that other favorite trend of London theatre is also in full use here: nonstop smoking. This isn’t the ‘50s, guys; it doesn’t do much to define a character to have him smoking the entire play. It’s just silly.
The bright spot is Ukweli Roach as Angel Cruz, who I would have sworn was American. Ukweli captures that difficult role of being a tough young man capable of, well, killing, who also is incredibly sympathetic. Unlike for Lucius, you do feel that Angel deserves better than he got, which is a huge feat considering how little the actor actually gets to play with. Guirgis has created such defined characters, but he doesn’t use them to their fullest potential to convey whatever it is he’s actually trying to say.
INFORMATION
Jesus, A Train! is playing at London’s Young Vic until April 6. It is two hours, with a 15-minute intermission, which is the best kind of show structure. If you go, bring ear plugs and a face mask. It is in the round, another overused, under-considered ploy of this year.
Related Posts
“Chess” on the West End: Great Music in a Weird AF Production
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “Chess” at London’s English National Opera, playing until June 2.
You know how Broadway keeps trying to make shows about basketball and they never really take off? Well at least basketball has some action to it. Imagine a show about the most boring game ever. “Chess”, the 1980s musical from ABBA menfolk Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus with lyrics from Tim Rice, really truly did that. The music still stands as some of the most famous and mainstream to come out of musical theatre (‘One Night in Bangkok’, anyone?), yet the book veers on ridonk. It’s one of the few shows I prefer to be done in a concert version. Still, I had high expectations for London’s new big production at the English National Opera’s Coliseum, but these expectations were not met. The score was well sung, but the production – both in terms of visuals, sound, and more – did more to hurt the show than help it.
“Chess” is a musical that went full-80s by centering on a chess championship between two stars of the game that happen to be from the major Cold War players – America and the Soviet Union. We have Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Sergievsky, and we have American grandmaster Freddie Trumper. I know – I was groaning too when I realized that was his name, because I assumed they stupidly made it special for this newest production. But that’s actually the original name. I wonder if Trump was a famous enough buffoon at the original time of writing to make the connection legit and I’m sure he was; it’s just extra weird to have it be in a show now. (A change wouldn’t be so bad.) But like his namesake before he acquired the power to destroy so many lives, Freddie is a loud, obnoxious, mean-spirited but fairly harmless jerk who is so cocky of his chess ability (I mean I can’t really accept in the first place that this guy would be playing chess or acting like this about chess) that it makes audiences root for the imposing Russian instead. Our Freddie is played by Tim Howar, who really did a great job being obnoxious and jerky and added to it being very yelly, so it made it really simple for me to root for Anatoly in every possible way. And that’s a huge accomplishment because Anatoly was played by London legend Michael Ball who, although he sings the role beautifully, is way too old and just wrong in every way for the part. Honestly, this mistake in the most principal casting is a huge reason why the show doesn’t work.
“Chess” is a musical that went full-80s by centering on a chess championship between two stars of the game that happen to be from the major Cold War players – America and the Soviet Union. We have Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Sergievsky, and we have American grandmaster Freddie Trumper. I know – I was groaning too when I realized that was his name, because I assumed they stupidly made it special for this newest production. But that’s actually the original name. I wonder if Trump was a famous enough buffoon at the original time of writing to make the connection legit and I’m sure he was; it’s just extra weird to have it be in a show now. (A change wouldn’t be so bad.) But like his namesake before he acquired the power to destroy so many lives, Freddie is a loud, obnoxious, mean-spirited but fairly harmless jerk who is so cocky of his chess ability (I mean I can’t really accept in the first place that this guy would be playing chess or acting like this about chess) that it makes audiences root for the imposing Russian instead. Our Freddie is played by Tim Howar, who really did a great job being obnoxious and jerky and added to it being very yelly, so it made it really simple for me to root for Anatoly in every possible way. And that’s a huge accomplishment because Anatoly was played by London legend Michael Ball who, although he sings the role beautifully, is way too old and just wrong in every way for the part. Honestly, this mistake in the most principal casting is a huge reason why the show doesn’t work.
The story begins with men singing about the history of chess, and projections of like Egyptian hieroglyphs line the walls and you’re like wat. Oh yes, so this production’s biggest faux pas is relying on digital projections instead of sets or ya know taste. Weird images that suggest that someone was having a bit too much fun with a new computer program make up most of the artwork projected onto the various block-shaped screens. The set up of the square screens is copied from the original concept album artwork, which is…a nice throwback, I guess, but not enough of a reason to design the entire staging that way. You can see the same idea of the squares in the picture at the top of the page – the set up is such that images projected onto the square screens were chopped up in places where the squares don’t meet, so there was a lot of distortion. I’m sure the set designers and production team will justify the distortion with some lofty statement about how reality is distorted when projected from screens too but that is also not enough of a reason to excuse such horrible visuals for nearly 3 hours.
After the unclear history lesson, things go haywire if you are familiar with the American stage version. The American and British books for ‘Chess’ are COMPLETELY different. Anatoly wins in one, Freddie the other. In one, the first match takes place in Italy, the second in Bangkok, but in the other, the whole show is just one match in Bangkok! The song orders are completely scrambled too. I don’t know HOW that happened. So the British version is what we are talking about here, obvs. Anatoly and Freddie arrive in Merano, Italy for their big world championship chess tournament, and the mayor and townspeople rejoice by singing the lamest song “Merano” that just does not fit the show. It’s a huge white chorus in laderhosen and braids because they are close to Switzerland I guess and they do dorky folk dances and it’s super awkward considering the modern pop taste of the rest of the score. After this seemingly photoshopped insert, Freddie and Anatoly are met with an enormous crowd of TV cameras and lots of shouting. Freddie responds with a song that I think was also about shouting (“Commie Newspapers”) as he fights with his assistant and yells at all the reporters. I would too though; most of them are awful. Here, the projections changed to be close-ups of the actors’ faces. I noticed two cameramen onstage who I believe were capturing the footage of the actors that was projected live, which like that’s cool that you figured that out to do it live but it is not attractive. Most of the projections – and remember, that is the entirety of the set and set design here – for the rest of the show were Tom Hooper-style close-ups of the actors’ faces. It was horrendous. Now this is the first full-fledged production of ‘Chess’ that I’ve seen, so this could be how the show is always supposed to be staged. It doesn’t mean it’s good. If the show was supposed to be on screen it would be on screen, and not in a live theatre. TV requires a completely different set of skills and tools, not just on the part of the actors, so to kind of force these performances to be both theatre and television at the same time made both a big mess. Remember during the Tony performance of ‘The Book of Mormon’ the camera focused on one ensemble member who was doing all his funny-face reaction shots for his track? You weren’t supposed to just be looking at him. Also, I did not want to stare at the giant projected faces of the characters the entire time; I wanted to watch the actual actors and maybe their interaction instead of counting their pores. That’s what theatre is for.
Using all my might to focus on the actors and not the atrocious projections, I followed the ridiculous story. Freddie yells at everyone, Anatoly kind of simmers with unpredictability – it could be either rage or boredom – and the world…watches? Their meeting in competition, broadcast all over the world, represents the larger conflict between the two countries they represent, so the entire world is on the edge of their seats watching. Not really though, because it’s chess. The first round of the match is about to begin and lights focus aaaaaand…then we have just two men sitting at a table playing chess quietly. It doesn’t exactly make for good theatre. Their playing sessions should have had them singing. Instead they just sat there and played and it was super boring. Then of course Freddie yells that Anatoly is cheating (because Freddie is losing) and he storms off like the brat he is and you’re like maybe the ‘action’ isn’t better than the boring chess match.
Freddie’s assistant and presumed lover, Florence Vassy (Cassidy Janson, who is pretty great), begs Freddie to have dinner with Anatoly to reconcile after the storming off, but Freddie gets sidetracked by Bangkok’s nightlife (“One Night in Bangkok”, which is more talk-sung that I remember and when you don’t have Adam Pascal’s incredible talk/scream-singing ability to make it pop it’s really just awkward) so Florence and Anatoly end up alone and they…fall in love? Dudes. Florence is a young attractive lady and Anatoly is MICHAEL BALL. Nothing against Mr. Ball (hehe ball) but he is like 60? And he’s not exactly a hot young guy of the sort that help Anatoly make any kind of narrative sense. Florence’s love for him comes out of nowhere and then is the emotional underpinning of the entire show and the trying-so-hard-to-be-dramatic-ending so if you aren’t invested in their love, or if you don’t believe even a bit of it, the whole piece fails and feels forced and empty.
Anatoly is married, by the way, and has a young son. We see him say goodbye to them in the weird Egyptian prologue. His wife Svetlana is played by Alexandra Burke, the one who won a season of The X Factor. She is NOT EVEN 30 YEARS OLD. She’s like a super hot young recording artist. She’s not married to Michael Ball ffs! And Cassidy is like 37 and beautiful and hot in Ireland (a ginger) and she is not falling in love at first sight with Michael Ball! This is NONSENSE. If you don’t buy right off the bat that all the young gorgeous women love them some Anatoly, then the show doesn’t work. After Anatoly affairs up with Florence, most of the drama has nothing to do with chess. It’s all about the two women dealing with their love for this troubled man. AIN’T BUYING IT.
Lots of nonsense happens after this, like Anatoly defects from the Soviet Union (in Soviet Union, they defect you) and seeks asylum with Florence in Britain; Svetlana teams up with a TV station to confront her husband Jerry Springer-style on live TV (??? AIN’T BUYING IT); and there’s more quiet games of chess in a freaking musical. The book is so strange, the set design is as I said the devil’s work, and yet the score is overall so great. You have Svetlana’s big soul-searching “Someone Else’s Story”, a lovely song that deserves to be about more than this hot woman’s old cheating Rusky husband. Alexandra does a nice job as Svetlana considering she isn’t an actress but a recording artist. Her acting leaves something to be desired but in this production it’s fine. You have Florence’s big angry “Nobody’s Side” which absolutely rocks out as a song but deserves to be about more than a fight she had with her asshole boss. (Florence’s songs seem tailor-made for Idina Menzel, who played the role in a concert version years back. They’re written in a way that lets Cassidy kind of sound like Idina sometimes too, which is cool but just makes you wish you were seeing Idina. (Josh Groban played Anatoly in that version, with Idina. Don’t get me started on how badly I wish I could have seen that version. That’s the goddamn great version.)) Then you have the big duet between the two women, “I Know Him So Well”, the highlight of the show but again, it deserves to be about something better than two women being sad about an inadequate man. I wish these songs had a better book to hold them up in the pantheon of musical theatre but alas.
I know I’m being quite mean to the men in this show, but it’s not their fault. Everyone behind the scenes is responsible for what doesn’t work here, not the actors. Michael Ball is like the greatest British musical theatre actor but he is not right for this part. He sings his songs beautifully but (sadly) this isn’t a concert version. Casting matters! I’ve railed enough about the set design but the sound design was bad too! And this is the freaking English National Opera building. It takes effort to destroy the acoustics. But often, with the fast-paced songs (a lot of them in this poppy score), the lyrics would come through the speakers just as sort of an indecipherable hum or growl. I honestly can’t believe they let that kind of issue stand.
Luckily, the music is so good and generally so well sung that “Chess” is still a decent time at the theatre. This production really should have been a concert version though. Or they should have cast men who better matched with the women they cast, or vice versa. Or they really should have just gotten Josh Groban to reprise his role. I wouldn’t even be writing this complainy complainerson review if that were the case; I’d still be there watching every single performance. Big mistake, men*. Big. Huge!
INFORMATION
Never, and I mean NEVER, sit anywhere at the ENO except for the stalls/orchestra. There’s only one staircase to the upper levels and the crowd is uniformly old so it takes literal hours to get out from upstairs. It’s an infuriating fire hazard for one thing and a real pain in my ass for another.
They do have water pitchers at the bar though.
STAGE DOOR
I saw it on my birthday so I didn’t stage door. I had cake to eat.
*I looked at the production and the creative team and except for the costume designer all the people are men.
“When We Were Young And Unafraid” at City Center: Harrowing & Timely Portrayal of the Wimmins
|
*Okay, I know this show is no longer on the boards. But I wrote this while it was still playing. And it’s a great play.
So, let’s just get this clear straight off: This show had nothing to do with Les Mis! Even though every time I think of the title I’m singing it, there was no reference to old timey France at all. I know! WWWYAU (this is not a good acronym I won’t use this again) is effectively a character study amid various growing ideals of feminism. Four women, with wildly different ideas about where and how women fit in the world, interact in a safe house in the 1970s, run by the president of all things Acting, Cherry Jones. |
The inimitable Queen Jones plays Agnes, a strong, independent woman running a B&B that we quickly learn doubles as a safe house for battered women when they finally (though not always permanently) leave abusive relationships. Agnes fought through two wars as a nurse, and her resulting strength and no-bullshit style is evident at all times. We learn that this badass mofo lost her nursing license by providing abortions. So you are just totally pulling for her to win, even though there’s no real contest to win or lose, just life. Also, she lives on a very remote island in I think Washington state surrounded by what’s appropriately called “Useless Bay” because it’s too shallow for ships to pass through. So I don’t know what she could win at besides the silent game.
She also rocks at not taking bullshit. This is one of my favorite qualities in a person, so Agnes was like my jam. One of the characters says to her, “Anger is like an art form with you,” and it’s true both of Agnes and Cherry Jones. Jones is one of the best stage actresses alive, probably the best non-singing one, and she does complicated and diverse levels of yelling like you can’t even imagine. It’s a treat to watch her perform and bring whatever she is in to a higher level. I never watched “24” but I imagine she made that almost like 25.
A lot of her yelling comes about because of her 16-year-old daughter Penny, played by Dana Brody playing Dana Brody. Her acting style was apparently learned from the school of speaking breathlessly and fast in such a way that you know her brain is pushing words out faster than her mouth can keep up so it sounds like gargling gibberish…but somehow it always works. Her bad enunciation and too fast brain make her a very believable teenager. She should play teenagers her whole life. Her words come out like she has a slushee machine instead of an esophagus. You catch the gist and she spews so well but the whole time she’s speaking you’re thinking why am I suddenly covered in slushee?
Penny introduces herself to us as a very headstrong, very awesome future writer for Jezebel, lamenting the idea of prom and wearing dresses in general as traditions – in her words (paraphrased) – developed by the patriarchy that place females on display and require looking nice and demure as they apologize for having a vagina. She says some pretty amazing stuff like that, but I can’t remember any more because it was covered in slushee.
Anyway, like most teenagers, she disappoints. Most of her energy soon switches focus to getting the captain of the football team to ask her to prom and then be her way-too-serious boyfriend. The whole football team captain is kind of clichéd but then again so is everything in life. She accomplishes her goals by ignoring and skipping good chunks of school, which is really stupid because she says she wants to go to Yale. (Which is also really stupid HEYOOO).
Penny also gets some really cringe-worthy advice and assistance from Maryanne (a gripping Zoe Kazan), the latest abused wife to seek refuge at Agnes’s. Maryanne seems like the quintessential ‘60s-‘70s housewife, apologizing for male chauvinism like it’s her fault for existing in their world, and teaching Penny how to charm any man: by using a babyish voice, acting stupid and needy and unable to survive without him around to chew up food and spit it in her babybird mouth. It’s all very upsetting because there are women today who still think it’s best to act like that and sacrifice any semblance of independence or ability in order to keep men happy, and of course there are shittastic men who fancy that kind of behavior as well. F the patriarchy.
So we hope that Penny will realize, like, hey Maryanne…look where your advice got you, with a crazy abusive husband who doesn’t respect you as a real person even a little bit and gets crazy violent when he realizes he might not have full control over you like a toy. But instead Penny’s like yay he plays football and I’m going to cheer for him instead of doing homework and we’re going to prom which is like the coolest and we’re gonna get married even though I’d need parental consent and Agnes would never because she’s smart.
In the midst of all these new family problems, we learn that Agnes is not actually her mother. Penny’s birth mother was one of the battered women who came to Agnes for help (and was actually friends with her beforehand), gave birth in the room of the house that we stare into the entire show, and then abandoned the baby and ran back to her abuser, who promptly killed her. Penny KNOWS ALL OF THIS. So it’s all too sad when she makes the same mistakes and follows the same path as Maryanne and her mother. It shows how ingrained the subservient role of the woman was (and still is), and how her main role was to find a husband, and even if that husband beat her it was better than being unmarried. This sick world. And there are too many people who still think like that, or blame the woman for doing exactly what the world told her she was supposed to do. Grahhhhhh.
Looking at all of this awfulness and shaking her head is Hannah (Cherise Boothe, completely awesome), a black super feminist searching the region for a group she heard was establishing an all-female lesbian commune. While Hannah’s version of ideal feminism is troubling as well (pretty much, if you aren’t a lesbian, you aren’t a feminist), it’s somehow so much better than Maryanne and Penny’s little game. Hannah would have loved Lorena Bobbit. Hannah is kind of crazy but in a fun way – she enters the house by climbing through windows and making everyone fear a burglar, and she doesn’t know how to be respectful of others or say thanks but eh she’s alright. Most of all, she’s a necessary counterpart to Maryanne.
The most powerful and the most depressing part of the show came when a celebratory Hannah stopped by to inform Agnes of the Roe v. Wade decision. She excitedly shouts “Things are changing!” and Agnes calmly takes a breath and responds, “They’ll change back.” The jaw-dropped silence that swept the audience said more about our current society than any words can. This tiny line and its reading perfectly described the past few decades and what is constantly happening to abridge womens rights.
Another very emotional and realistic hit came when Maryanne and Paul, a guest at the B&B, start to flirt with each other. Paul is an extreme suspenders kind of guy, very mild-mannered and seemingly ‘nice’. Later, Paul kisses Maryanne, not knowing any of her history, and she understandably freezes and then pushes him away. This guy we thought was so nice yells at her for being a tease, saying that she was begging him for this and now she’s tricking him with her female trickery and big eyes. So we thought Paul was one of the good ones but he was just another assclown wearing an asshat who thinks women only exist to satisfy men’s needs and doesn’t like when he is proven wrong. It was revolting but accurate. But then of course poor weak Maryanne is like “No Paul don’t call me names I’ll do whatever you want and then we can leave here together and have babies in San Francisco”. Ughhhhh why are peopleeeeeeeeeee.
So yeah, this play is intense and can be disturbing in its very complicated and accurate depictions of various sorts of mindsets. If anything, it tells the audience that we have so much work still to do, to not only achieve gender equality but to just get people to realize that yes we do want that.
Or at least I think that’s what it was about; there were a lot of phones going off. Seriously people these are your tasks: a) Realize that being a feminist just means not being an asshole, so yes you do want to fight to be one and be proud to be one, and b) turn off your phones in the theatre.
