Jesus Hopped the “A” Train at London’s Young Vic: Lots and Lots of Words, but the Meaning Unclearby Randi / March 21, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is All About Eve at London’s Noel Coward Theatre, playing until May 11. Watch the movie instead!
A few years ago, my family gathered together on Christmas morning to do one of our favorite things: watch a new Oscars screener. The movie was ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, which would kickstart the career of the incredible Oscar Isaac. Because we are movie people – and because we are decent human beings who know how to behave – we watched in silence for about an hour. But at that point, my sister-in-law broke the silence and asked the room, to hilarious effect, “So, this is terrible, right?” It didn’t matter that some disagreed; for me that line was better than the movie and one of the funniest moments ever. If I were willing to talk in the theatre, I would have quoted her recently when I saw the new production of All About Eve at London’s Noel Coward Theatre. After the sheen of seeing its famous stars wore off, it was absolute torture to sit through, and it took all my might not to say to my husband, “So, this is terrible, right?
As you probably know, the movie “All About Eve” is a classic Best Picture winner about two headstrong actresses, one an established Broadway star and one yoot trying to take her place. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen the movie, but I remember that, although the two women were devious (one more than the other) and determined and like not great people, they weren’t fully out of their minds batshit crazy. ENTER: Ivo van Hove, London’s favorite theatre director who is known for his visually striking takes on reworking classics but who is arguably a misogynist. What a perfect show for Ivo to destroy so he can continue showing off his hatred of women while also displaying his love of stark staging and cold projections! Instead of the actresses being strong women, one of whom is determined to a fault and kind of scary, both are now outrageous lunatics who may as well be clawing at each other the entire time and screaming like babies and tearing each other’s hair out while Ivo sits in a chair offstage smoking a cigar and muttering ‘yes this is women.’
What makes it all worse is that it stars the great Gillian Anderson as Margo Channing, the big Broadway star, and the world’s new favorite blonde Lily James as Eve Harrington, the young upstart. These are two huge actresses right now and this classic work with the two of them? it should be EPIC in its greatness, not in its failure. To make matters worse, because this stars these two giant celebrities, tickets are astronomically expensive. So we paid more than we have paid for any other tickets in the past six or so months to see this steaming pile of dog shit, except worse than that because at least a pile of dog shit necessitates a doggo being nearby. There were no dogs!
So, let’s do a quick plot overview. Margo Channing (Anderson) is a Broadway star, currently in a play written by her friend Lloyd, who is married to her friend Karen, both of whom are cast so strangely that there is no forking way they would be married in real life. After the performance one evening, Karen brings a young woman, Eve (James), who was waiting for Margo at stage door into Margo’s dressing room. PROBLEM #1: Who in tarnation lets a random fan come backstage to meet the actress? As someone who stagedoored mm let’s just say a lot, I can tell you right now, that shit does not and SHOULD NOT happen. So, right off the bat we got some bullshit. To increase the crazy quotient, Margo hires Eve to work as her assistant, which also means living with her. Cool guys, yeah, this is a thing, I am also Lin-Manuel’s personal assistant and I live with Kelli O’Hara, this is the result of stagedooring.
So Eve ingratiates herself into Margo’s life but Margo starts to distrust her, which she should have done when she first met her, but she was too busy worrying about being old. Her main character trait is being insecure about her age because she is over 40 (gasp!) and her boyfriend, Bill, is younger, so to make her feel better, Bill says to Margo “You’re not old! You’re young! You’re six!” which is DISGUSTING ughhh men are gross. We see her birthday party happen pretty much in real time, and it’s a bad party, and everyone is in the kitchen, which is hidden from our view, so it’s worse than your average shitty party. I can’t believe this show. Eve weasels her way in more and more and somehow becomes Margo’s understudy in the current play, which is definitely what happens when you stage-door stalk celebrities, you get cast in the Broadway play mm hmm sure sure, I am a multi-Tony winner yes. And here is my biggest problem with this story: Everyone says that Eve is utterly fantastic at her first reading, so we know that she is actually a great actress. Meaning, she doesn’t have to scheme anymore. The most powerful people in the theatre now know that she is excellent and are ready to hire her…so…that’s that then, right guys? I don’t understand why there can’t be two great actresses in NYC in this universe. They know there are like, lots of them, right? WHY CAN’T THERE BE TWO? Everything after Eve gets hired has zero force because there’s literally zero reason for her to continue being a crazy beeyotch. Things are slow and boring for a while and then boom, out of nowhere the whole ending is so nonsensical it actually hurts. The playwright was going to leave his wife for Eve? Since when? Since they met like the day before and talked once? Eve was gonna just put up with Addison forever and let him blackmail her? She could have easily gotten her good review out of him and then told him to fork off. I don’t get her being submissive after all she has done. And the whole tidy wrap up with another girl in Eve’s room wanting to be like her to show that what, women operate in a cycle of trickery and dominance? Physical pain.
Is the writing or the direction worse? Ivo tried to be clever but everything looked messy and busy. It was like Ivo thought up a hundred new tricks and instead of picking one or two to focus on, he threw them all in and hoped for the best. There was creepy music vamping the entire time that became excessive and annoying. There were long pauses that were supposed to be dramatic but were mostly frustrating. If they cut half of those long pauses, it would have been a 90 minute show. Most of all, the whole movie-camera concept was ill-conceived. If we wanted to see this story presented more like a movie, we would have watched the damn movie, Ivo, and we would have loved it and we would have saved hundreds of dollars and we would not have gotten AGITA from all the ANGER. There were literally cameramen with working cameras following the actors around, and their filming was projected onto the back wall for us to watch live. Sometimes important action was happening out of our view, like in the kitchen (the birthday party scene) or the bathroom (literally the climax of the show) and the only way the audience saw this, this important action, was because the cameraman was filming and we watched the projection. WHO STAGES THE MOST CLIMACTIC SCENES OF A PLAY OFFSTAGE. I mean, I get that you are going for some sort of expose vibe but this isn’t a FORKING MOVIE, IVO. If you want to direct a movie I’m sure someone would hire you to do that, but don’t take a stage show and try to make it your next film. Ugh the cameras so often settled on empty glasses and dishes and projected those for us to stare at and it’s like, ‘ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY SOMETHING DEEP, BECAUSE WE ARE JUST LOOKING AT GLASSES.’
But then the writing was so cringeworthy that with literally every other line, my husband and I were kicking each other. They owe me new stockings because of how bad this writing was! Not one line of honest or realistic dialogue is in the whole thing. There was a line about how every ticket holder to a play would ask for refunds if an understudy was on – this in a city (London) where they famously DON’T GIVE REFUNDS IF AN UNDERSTUDY IS ON! Don’t get me started about how shitty a policy that bullshit is, especially for a show like this when there is a 1000% price increase for these big stars.
I wish I could say that if they had a different director take this in a different direction, it would have been good. But nothing happening on that stage was salvageable. Gillian, who is often superb onstage, is not superb here. She spoke in a low gravely monotone that seemed bored and kept us from connecting. At least she still has a strong stage presence and is usually great. Lily, on the other hand, should not be a stage actress. Her climactic screaming breakdown evoked no emotions other than fremdschamen. She is winning onscreen but is simply not meant for the stage.
There is one trick that Ivo employed that works: when Margo stares at herself in the mirror (projected to us, naturally) and slowly sees herself morph into an old lady. That was cool. You know what wasn’t cool? Having the cameraman film Margo throwing up in the bathroom after drinking too much. That was not cool. I am so tired of Ivo’s misogyny. He made these two women into painful caricatures where they were once interesting women, flawed but recognizable as humans. This is more like cartoon version of what MRA men like to joke about women being like.
To add insult to injury, it is two hours long – WITHOUT AN INTERVAL. Most normal shows do an hour for Act 1, 20 minute intermission, and an hour for Act 2, but this one just skips the interval. It could be to preserve this utterly silly movie vibe, but I would bet you a million dollars that they did it because they knew people would skip out on the second half. Halfway through, there is even a very clear change in vibe that screams out to be the act break, and would have been a good one, but they simply pause and then KEEP TORTURING YOU while you now also have to pee. FIE. FIE UPON HOVE (also the name of a town in England, I’m guessing).
INFORMATION
All About Eve is playing at the Noel Coward Theatre until May 11. Programmes were £4.50, 50p less than normal because I bet the programme sellers felt bad about all the money everyone’s spending to see this monstrosity. In contrast to my usual thinking, I recommend the dress circle in this theatre and not the stalls, because the stalls are below ground level and they don’t let you leave through the main doors at the end so you have to exit onto the street which is some bullshit.
I did not try to stage door – what was I gonna say, “hey you were really great in ‘Mamma Mia 2’ but not this”?? – so I can’t say if they come out or not but like do you care, don’t see this, it’s bad.
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Six the Musical: Divorced! Beheaded! Live! And Here to Save British Musical Theatre
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the new musical Six, playing at London’s Arts Theatre.
Longtime Laughfrodisiac readers (or people who have spoken to me in real life for more than five minutes) have heard me bitch and moan about the sorry state of British musical theatre before, and often. The only great shows for literally decades came courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber (and he wasn’t immune to some straight-up horseshit), and a random few from Elton John (Billy Elliot) and Tim Minchin (Matilda). Matilda premiered in 2010, so that’s almost a decade without a great new British musical. And people wonder why I always say musical theatre is better on Broadway. While that’s still true, finally, forking g-d FINALLY, a new, original, fantastic musical written by Brits has arrived. It seems what the world of British musicals needed wasn’t another old white man (honestly when has that ever been the answer), but two young Cambridge students ready to make their mark before even graduating (I know, I hate them too). Six the Musical is a girl-power retelling of the stories of Henry VIII’s six wives, a concert-style show that is fast and furious in its remarkable ability to share history through modern pop music that is funny, inspired, and absurdly catchy.
From just the tagline – “Divorced, Beheaded, Live!” playing on the famous rhyme for remembering how the wives died – I knew this was going to be fun, but I was not ready to be blown away by the brilliant music. The six wives, onstage with their all-female band, are outfitted in the coolest of costumes, a shiny modern slant on medieval garb, kind of like it’s Halloween and they decided on ‘sexy Tudor.’ They’ve gathered now to have a sort of contest, to see which of them suffered the most and ‘wins’ that dubious title of most unfortunate of the six wives, kind of like how Monica won the title of giving the best bad massages. As soon as they begin singing “Welcome to the show, to the histor-remix” I was like OH DIP (because I speak like Jason Mendoza as a rule now), WORDPLAY, this is going to be spectacular. And from that opening number, “Ex-Wives”, I was enthralled and honestly elated at how good the music was.
From the opening onward, the lyrics are clever and the music is fun and memorable. Throughout all of it, there are amazing nerdy history jokes peppered in, which, as nerds, we adored, and straight up historical lessons on things we never knew. Since English people are super nerdy about knowing and loving their history (would be cool, America!), there’s an immediate sense that everyone is sharing inside jokes, which is a surefire way to solidify audience engagement and enjoyment, and guarantee positive word of mouth. In fact, this is the first show in a while where the audience was so engaged that there wasn’t much extraneous chatter or phone use, which is a g-d miracle.
Pretty much every musical number – and since it is a concert-style show, it’s a series of musical numbers with limited dialogue in between – delivers, with the badass energy of “Ex-Wives” continuing into the first solo, Catherine of Aragon’s (Jarneia Richard-Noel) “No Way”, about how she was not about to give this jackass the annulment he wanted. “No Way” is one of the catchier songs, one I could see being played on the radio (it’s even on my running playlist). It is a forking great time and Richard-Noel has a blast with it. The girl-power vibe remains into the second wife’s solo, but in a much different way. If you know your history, you know that second wife is the most famous one, Anne Boleyn. Where Catherine #1 had self-assurance, Anne goes for cheeky and trades in on innocent-seeming adorableness to gloss over anything she may have done wrong in the funny “Don’t Lose UR Head”. Definitely the millennial character of the bunch, Boleyn (Millie O’Connell) sings how she’s “sorry not sorry bout what I said…I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, lol.” It’s a bold move to show Boleyn as a naughty young girl trying to make her actions seem cute, and I liked that even though she’s the most famous wife, she doesn’t get the most attention or development. We have more interesting wives to learn about.
Like Wife #3, Jane Seymour, or as the other wives mock her, “the only one he really loved.” To have a needed break from all the loud fast songs so far, Jane gets the slow Adele-like power ballad about her “Heart of Stone”. Natalie Paris does a fantastic job with this well-placed song and gets to really show off, while selling a convincing and honestly heartbreaking take on why she wasn’t lucky just because Henry loved her. I love that this show makes you reconsider all of your assumptions about these women. Like Wife #4, Anna of Cleves. First of all, I always thought it was Anne. Second of all, obviously liberties were taken, but I adore thinking of her as having made out like a g-d bandit after Henry divorced her. In her hilarious song, “Get Down”, Anna (a great Alexia McIntosh) says since Henry divorced her rather quickly because she wasn’t actually as hot as she looked in her profile pic (erm, oil painting), she put up with a few months of his crap until he divorced her and then she got to live like a queen for the rest of her life. Not a bad deal at all, she admits, taking herself out of the competition with her proud acknowledgement that her life post-Henry was theeee shit. And nothing is funnier and more perfect than the group number introducing Anna – “Haus Of Holbein”. In it, we learn how Henry turned to Germany for his next wife, and what better way to tell us than in a spot-on spoof of a German club anthem, absolutely hysterical and perfect.
Of course, Anna was the lucky one, and after he divorced her he was right back to treating his wives horribly. Next came Katherine Howard, my favorite of the bunch, with her incredible number “All You Wanna Do”, which has her channeling Ariana Grande while bragging about her promiscuous past in the beginning and then turning it into a devastating post-mortem on how her whole life was about being used and abused by men. Aimee Atkinson, with this show since the beginning, was the standout for me, and in one song she achieved the kind of character development most shows dream about. It doesn’t hurt that this song has some of the cleverest lyrics, and the greatest use of the phrase ‘birds and the bees’ maybe ever.
With all these truly amazing songs, it was inevitable that there would be a slight dip in quality, and that happened when we got to the sixth wife, Catherine Parr (Courtney Stapleton, on as alternate). She didn’t get to really shine as the others did, because her song is the weakest. It also ends abruptly as she decides to change their focus, so it’s not as crucial to have strengthened since it segues into a group number. And that group number is pretty moving, as the wives decide to change their perspective, and ours. Maybe instead of regarding them as being famous just because they were married to Henry, they say, maybe we should consider that hewas only famous because he was married to them. Whenever you have a show that sets out to be ‘girl-power’, it runs the risk of pandering for applause, and while they came close to that line, the way they presented this discussion saved it.
The downsides are few: For one, the sound in the Arts Theatre isn’t great. It’s a tiny almost-black box of a theatre, with acoustics that do not measure up to what a West End theatre should have. It was often hard to make out the extraordinarily clever lyrics, which is a shame, because they are extraordinarily clever. Whether it was solely due to the sound engineering or a mix of sound issues plus enunciation needs, I don’t know, but it would be wise to shore up the clarity on either front. My only other issue is that, because it is so strong, it’s a shame it’s not a full-fledged book musical. With equal focus on six different characters, you’d think they would have had trouble cutting it to a suitable length for modern audience’s attention spans. Instead, it presents the opposite situation, with an adoring audience eager for more. At 75 minutes, it’s great that it never overstays its welcome – always leave them wanting more, I guess – but it could easily take another 15 minutes, flesh out a few of the more superficial characters, and still be a breezy show. But I guess it’s best to count our lucky stars that there is nary a weak moment in this show, and that the audience was fully rapt (and off their phones, praise be) the whole time, so who am I to dare risk all that magic? Six is a joyous, provocative, inspired show and I will gladly see it again and again, which is something I have never said about a British musical.
INFORMATION
The Arts Theatre is tiny, so it is a madhouse in the lobby. The bathrooms are tiny so get in line early. This is one show where it’s fun to be super close.
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.
