A German Life at the Bridge Theatre: Maggie Smith is a Treasure; This Show is Notby Randi / May 9, 2019The minute you walk in the joint, you can tell this was a show of distinctionnnn A REAL BIG SPENDER. Okay I’ll try to stop doing that (no promises), but man I’m not lying about the game being ON as soon as you enter the Donmar, all redone in the style of Andy Warhol’s 1950s factory. Sure the style redo doesn’t technically add anything for the story, but this specific anachronism doesn’t harm the story at all so I have no issue with their going for a cool look. And every other inch of this stunning, shocking, poignant revival is pitch perfect, not only serving the story but improving its meaning and deepening its emotional reach, in a way I never ever would have guessed was possible from knowing this show in previous incarnations.
As soon as the beat dropped (in my heart #jasonmendoza) and Anne-Marie Duff’s Charity started speaking to the pace of her quick-beating heart, jumping too quickly at any semblance of affection (as well as into a BUBBLE PIT LAKE, want) and latching onto it though it was always too slippery to grasp, I was in awe. No longer simply a good-hearted, down-on-her-luck heroine, we’re finally reminded after too many bland, uninspired revivals that Charity is a tragic character, in a fully heartbreaking tragic tale like the old school Greeks did. Charity is no simple sweet gal; she is a poor aging woman who life continues to beat like a piñata yet she always retains hope that the piñata is full of candy so she’s like ‘I guess the beating from life is okay because maybe candy?’ but it never is candy, poor sweet Charity, it never is. It’s always more and more unfair bullshit and she deserves better and NEVER GETS IT and finally, thanks to Anne-Marie Duff in a true masterclass of performance and character understanding, that’s the Charity portrayed in all her pitiful, tragic glory.
Josie Rourke’s meticulous, brilliant direction uses every inch of Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ score and Neil Simon’s book to prove that this show is one of the great tragedies of musical theatre, exemplified by the super-slowed down version of “Big Spender” that, in its almost painstakingly slower meter, let the grit and devastation and more than anything desperation of the taxi dancers fill in all the slower gaps in the beat. You could tell the audience, recognizing the song, wanted to tap their feet and bop along in their seats, but Josie was like NO, SIT STILL, IT’S DEPRESSING. It was great. The other most well-known song in the show, though, was pure adorable joy, when Duff perfected, really, I mean, perfected, “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, when she finds herself in the apartment of a famous movie star (a fantastic Martin Marquez). With her scratchy voice that reminded me at times of Alice Ripley in Next to Normal (though with more optimism than Diana) in how it can use its jagged edges to cut directly to your core, Duff made this moment a delight, with nothing threatening to take it from her, like with all her future moments of happiness.
Another standout song, a song that I had forgotten about, was the determined number between Charity, ensemble standout Lizzy Connelly, and a great Debbie Kurup, “There’s Gotta be Something Better Than This”, a resolution among three pretty defeated women to ‘get up, get out’ and live a better life. Sharpening the emotional impact of what was already flawless was the painful reprise at the end, a knife through all our hearts that were already BROKEN ENOUGH from the preceding actions, jfc were Coleman and Simon and freaking Dorothy trying to kill us??
On top of all this, they also managed to include the most provocative version of Oscar (Arthur Darvill). Instead of just a one-note ‘nice’ guy who, like all ‘nice’ guys, ends up not being so nice, he was the epitome of toxic masculinity, representing in his averageness all the regular men who believe #notallmen yet still cannot condone women who live life on their own terms, women who don’t fit inside their controlling, oppressive box. Instead of feeling bad for Charity that Oscar isn’t what she’d hoped, you feel angry at Oscar for being such a weak man (and, though you hate to see her sad, glad that Charity found out before she devoted her life to him).
Honestly, if every revival brought half as much heart and inspiration to its reworking of classics, we would have endless amazing, transformative theatre. Rourke’s Sweet Charity sets a new benchmark that I hope future revivals can meet, but they’re gonna have a hard time trying.
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Wendell Pierce in Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic
It’s Theatre Tuesday! Today’s show is Death of a Salesman, playing at London’s Young Vic until July 13.
We’ve had quite the run of Arthur Miller plays lately. After this year’s decent The American Clock and meh All My Sons, it’s time for the most famous of them all, Death of a Salesman. DOAS was never my favorite play, maybe because I don’t like death, maybe because it’s so depressing, maybe because being forced to dissect it as a teenager and having my critique of ‘how can Arthur write all these plays and never once mention that he was married to Marilyn Monroe?’ dismissed was fairly annoying, but it is a classic. I guess I’m supposed to say ‘it’s a classic for a reason’, even though that’s such a clichéd line, but it’s true. More than Miller’s other plays, and more than most plays, DOAS pays attention to an ordinary man, Willy Loman, and thereby ‘the’ ordinary man, with all his frustratingly relatable problems and failures and bad luck. Willy’s wife Linda famously states at one point that her husband is not a great man or the finest character, but he’s a human being. And that’s why “attention must finally be paid to such a person.” Her line states the reason for this play’s longevity, and why it’s still worthwhile.
In this riveting and heartbreaking production from Marianne Elliott (responsible for the gender-swapped Company) and Miranda Cromwell, the Loman family is now black, which adds a deeper sense of suffering to the already sympathetic family’s troubles. Instead of seeing all of Willy’s tribulations and failures as the result of unfair, terrible luck, there’s the hint that it’s also the result of racist treatment, which today feels a lot more compelling than feeling sorry for yet another white man. But the universal nature of his collapse remains prominent, with this story of an average man’s average problems continuing to engross audiences. Few other plays more successfully show that you don’t need magical plots or far-fetched characters to achieve magic in the theatre, as the longevity of DOAS shows it’s enough to pay due attention to real life.
Those of you more familiar with the play are probably like “average problems, what?” and yes, he is losing his mind and he does die (spoiler) (in the title) because of this not-very-hum-drum problem, but that’s not the most striking aspect of Willy’s plight. His daily shortcomings and his ordinary mediocrity and his unremarkable disappointments are what have kept his story at the pinnacle of theatre for so many decades. And in Wendell Pierce’s shattering performance, that’s what hits hardest, how Willy is a pitiable but common man, one that everyone probably knows in real life. This is a huge feat from Pierce considering how impressive his portrayal of the mental breakdown was throughout the show. His ticks and losses of concentration build subtly, making you more and more uncomfortable and more and more anxious about this poor man. Pierce gives an incredible performance, the kind where you really can’t understand how he can put himself through all that 8 times a week.
Equally great is Sharon D. Clarke as his wife Linda, which is no surprise since Sharon D. Clarke is great in everything. Her delivery of the aforementioned famous summary of the play reverberated through the room with its significance. She made a relatively small role feel much larger, and any excuse to hear her sing or even hum, as she does a few times, is welcome. As for Biff and Happy, who usually bother me to no end, Arinze Kene and Martins Imhangbe made them come alive. The family’s story was best told through Willy’s flashbacks, shown brilliantly here with slideshow clicks and flashes to represent Willy’s memories taking over the forefront of his mind. This bit of directing was genius.
The only time the show fell really flat (an accomplishment in its 3 hour length) was in the Act II bar scene, when the Loman men meet a few women and flirt with them. Everything about this scene felt kind of amateur and off, mainly because there’s only so far that basic slinking around with an ‘ooh aren’t I gorgeous’ gaze can take you. Aside from that, the rest of the cast and really the rest of the show makes for probably the best production of this classic play you can see.
INFORMATION
The Young Vic run is sold-out, but you can try for rush tickets or cancellations. As is the annoying as all get-out Young Vic tradition, the shows start late as they fill all the empty seats with people from the cancellation line. Otherwise, the play is transferring to the Piccadilly Theatre (current home to The Lehman Trilogy) on October 24, 2019 until January 4, 2020 so you can buy tickets for that run, although I fear the power of the intimate, small theatre will be missed there.
The View Upstairs at the Soho: Heartfelt Yet Uneven Tribute with Potential
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The View Upstairs, playing at London’s Soho Theatre until August 24.
The best kinds of theatre tell a story somehow relevant to today, regardless of the time period or subject matter of the show, and get the message across in nuanced, powerful ways. In The View Upstairs, Max Vernon’s 2017 musical about the LGBTQ+ community, they’re getting a lot right, but there’s room for improvement. They’ve got the emotion, the politics, the lofty goals of what they want the end product to do, and a game and talented cast, but the nuance and art of it need work to make the show as a whole sing. With all that emotional honesty at the ready, the show has the potential to be great with some focus on fixing the weak spots.
Going into this production, the European premiere of Vernon’s musical that played off-Broadway in 2017, I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t even know it was a musical (best kind of surprise you could ever gift me, universe), and I definitely didn’t know it was about the 1973 New Orleans arson attack on a gay bar called the UpStairs, the biggest, deadliest attack on the queer community until Pulse. If you read that and thought ‘they made that horrible depressing story a musical?’ then you don’t know the power of musical theatre to tell any and every kind of story. The musical treatment feels right for this intimate, heartfelt play, with it becoming overall a lovely tribute to the victims. However, it wasn’t cohesive enough as a whole to be truly great theatre just yet. I feel like if they were willing to make some changes at this stage (preview period baby!), it can be.
Roughly, the story is about a 2019 fab-u-lous young influencer named Wes (a fabulous Tyrone Huntley, like wow you are a star and must be exhausted) who is trying to redefine and grow his brand by buying an abandoned building in New Orleans, the future home to his clothing line/influencing products I don’t know I don’t understand instagram. The realtor explains that some of the damage is the result of a fire, obviously the Chekhov’s gun of realtor comments even if you didn’t know what the show was about. I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT WE’RE GONNA SEE THE FIRE I HATE FIRE AHHH WHERE ARE THE EXITS. Wes sings the best song in the show, “#HouseholdName (I’m sorry the # is in the name I have to do it), does some drogas, and suddenly is in 1973, his building now (/then) a fun semi-secret gay bar filled with all sorts of characters. He’s a little confused – is he tripping? is he time-travelling? (Mantzoukas voice:) what’s going ON?! – but quickly rolls with whatever’s happening. His rolling with the punches/homies is uneven, because he doesn’t seem to ask any questions or do a ‘wait, what?’ moment, which is fine I guess, but then later in the show Wes begins a song with a lyric about how he’s been freaking out all night trying to figure out what’s happening and I was like, um no you haven’t? you were just kind of immediately cool with this?
The cast of characters Wes drops in on in 1973 are enjoying the UpStairs bar, a place where they can be themselves without worrying (too much) about the outside world. There’s Buddy (John Partridge), the lounge’s piano player (who reminded me so much of some old-timey musician but also of Jack Skellington), a closeted gay man with a wife and family whose resentment comes out to hurt everyone and not just himself, but for some reason no one seems to mind what an asshole he is. They mind that Dale (Declan Bennett), a clearly troubled man who needs help, is an asshole, but is he that much more of an asshole than Buddy? His song was really moving; I just wish it (and others) weren’t set up so clunkily.
The talented cast all get some moments to shine, some more than others, but some are miscast or mistreated. A standout for me was Cedric Neal’s Willie, who gets the perfect balanced role of making both funny and poignant comments while showing off his ridiculous voice. I loved Carly Mercedes Dyer as Henri, always reliable for belting her face off, but it was strange that she didn’t get a solo but Freddy’s mother had two?? I mean wtf. I loved Victoria Hamilton-Barritt in In the Heights, but her Puerto Rican accent did not work here, and the Ines character, mother of Freddy, has two too many songs. They bring the action to a screeching halt. Also, she looks at oldest in her early 30s, so casting her as the mother of someone who looks…also in his early 30s is beyond ridiculous. Yes yes actors should be able to play whoever and whatever they want (just ask ScarJo) but if you want to portray the emotional beats of a mother and son, they shouldn’t look like man + little sister who just came from church.
But the most disappointing part is how the pivotal role of Patrick is treated. Andy Mientus has come over from the great broad way to teach us how it’s done over here, and while he himself is fantastic as always, Patrick is not fleshed out as much as the role should be. First of all, Andy, one of the best musical theatre performers of his type right now, is given the two worst songs to sing. They do nothing to show off his voice; they kind of feel like first drafts. The second song was so close to being strong but it was clearly in the wrong key, and like, minor? Make it major and it would improve exponentially without hurting the song’s message. As for his character, Patrick seems like all the other ‘70s people, living their normal lives when Wes just drops in on them. But at the end, he acts like he’s been some sort of narrator or leader to Wes like forking Cuba Gooding Jr. in What Dreams May Come. But he wasn’t! But make him one! It would be so interesting (and really help with cohesiveness) if there was this constant thread of Patrick as narrator or guide. His talking to Wes at the end makes no sense (especially his big joke line about being ‘f-ing magical’, though funny) unless the character is retooled throughout the body of the show to actually be f-ing magical, some sort of guide through this memory.
Although I wanted to ignore any problems and focus on how important this story was, the problems are too obvious. The transitions between dialogue and songs feel very amateur and clunky, with a lot of spoken moments between characters that might as well have set up the next song like, “here, let me sing about what I mean.” It diminishes the flow of the story and the character development to set it up that way. It kind of felt like Working. It shouldn’t.
One more problem I had was the contrast they kept trying to force between the community in the ‘70s versus today. There are sooo many compelling differences to discuss, yet the focus seemed to be on how people today are vapid attention whores who just want influence online and strong branding, at the expense of real relationships and love, and that the gay community is purely and coldly transactional. That’s true for Wes, clearly, but I don’t see that as true for many people today. Yes, many spend lots of time forging internet presences, but most of them also have real lives, so that’s not a universal problem and shouldn’t be treated as one. I mean maybe the message of the importance of community is just meant for like YouTube stars who go to see it but I doubt that. It would be stronger if it focused more on Wes’s personal struggle instead of trying to blame an entire generation for the bad parts of the internet.
This feels like an opportune time to point out one of Laughfrodisiac’s favorite – and defining – movie quotes:
I’ve shared a lot of not-nice thoughts about this new musical but only because it’s all there, all the groundwork, all the emotion, all the heart they need to make it magical. (Now I need to quote Cuba: ‘I’M ALL HEART MUFUCKA!’) With a bit of work it can be great.
INFORMATION
During early previews, the show ran 2 hours straight through, no interval. There were several moments were it would have been fine to break the show and have an interval, which is highly recommended so other people don’t get UTIs. Also, not worrying about keeping it to one act could let more transitions be fleshed out fully.
STAGE DOOR
The Soho doesn’t really allow for regular stage-dooring, so you just wait outside the main entrance (as of now) for actors who want to come out from the lobby bar to come out. Cedric Neal came out first and was incredibly lovely and amazing, followed by Mientus who was also really nice. I left before anyone else came out. I think they were all hanging in the bar so if you are cool and at ease in bars you could just stick around in there.
