January 19, 2023
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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The Doctor on the West End: Has a Show Ever Made Me So Angry? Let’s Find Out!
It’s Theatre Thursday! This is a rant y’all! The Doctor closes at the Duke of York’s Theatre this Sunday. BYEEEEE.
The Doctor was more frustrating than waiting all night in A&E to get four minutes of face time, because at least at the hospital you know the NHS is doing their best with limited resources and you can blame Tories for that, but who can we blame here? Society? The writer? Tories? Tories it is.
This show was an exercise in trying to remain calm, and seated. I think I’m extra frustrated because it so could have been something powerful…or at least said something coherent and not just spit chaos at a stage. There are lots of issues I’m going to point out with this play about a doctor who follows hospital policy and then gets cancelled by the whole world for it, but there are two main ones I’ll focus all thoughts around.
Number 1: What the fuck.
The plot of The Doctor focuses on Juliet Stevenson’s character (I’m gonna call her Juliet) who is a cold but brilliant doctor. So maybe her bedside manner sucks, but she is always going to make the right call medically, which, I don’t know about you, but is what I want from a doctor. She knows her shit, and some dialogue in the first few minutes makes clear she’s a better doctor than her esteemed colleagues. When a teenage girl is dying on Juliet’s shift, a priest appears and insists on going into her hospital room to give her the last rites. The Doctor says, well, first of all I don’t know who you actually are, stranger off the street; b) I haven’t heard from her parents to give this permission/instruction which I would follow if they said so; and also the girl is very out of it but peaceful and I think it’s best for her to die peacefully and not panicking if she finds out she is dying. (And lo, she was right, because we find out later that some dick-faced intern asks the girl if she wants the last rites while the priest is making his ruckus, and so the girl does panic and does die panicking. you f-ed it, you piece of shit intern.)
So, back to my main issue: what the fuck.
I don’t understand why this isn’t a two minute discussion. She followed hospital policy and chose NOT TO ALLOW A STRANGER INTO A DYING MINOR’S ROOM. A stranger off the street who just shows up and says he is a priest, says that the parents called him and asked him to come – but the parents didn’t call the hospital to tell them to let him in. Is that just a cool thing to do in this country? I know you don’t have as many regulations on things like this as the USA does but really? I can just walk into a dying child’s hospital room even if the staff is like, hey now wait? that’s fine? So you’re saying she SHOULD have let a stranger into a child’s room to upset her when she was dying, without hearing from any guardian and even though her decision was supported by hospital policy.
Given the sense I just made at you, I thought maybe this play was going to be about how society has forgotten what common sense is, and the hubbub caused by this event would be shown for the insane circus that it was. Like, we were supposed to be this angry with how irrational all of this is, that was the intention. I assumed that the conflict would be portrayed as the whole world against Juliet when it was clear that Juliet was right, a case of someone being ‘cancelled’ unfairly (even though that sentiment is overblown since people simply don’t understand what words or consequences are but I digress). However, it seemed the opposite, and people approve of her facing professional consequences for her character unrelated to her job. People that are actually allowed to dress themselves in the morning (slash write the ‘real’ reviews for the Guardian et al) apparently think she was wrong – which okay, you might have made the opposite decision since both were allowed. You might have thought she should have let the stranger into the dying child’s hospital room with no proof that he was who he says he was. But was she wrong enough to get fired? To be publicly shamed, to be threatened, to be the subject of this shitstorm, to have bricks thrown through her window, to be yelled at by irrelevant activists on TV? no no no, bless your heart. But it seems the vast majority of people think this was all warranted.
Another wtf: where on earth were the hospital’s lawyers at all these subsequent board meetings? I worked in medical law for a few years and this is a big old piece of unrealistic nonsense that at no point in the first five seconds of the debacle did the lawyers show up and say “so, she followed hospital policy…that’s all there is to it. That’ll be 3000 pounds please.” It’s kind of laughable that this wasn’t a legal drama, as it would have been in real life. I know you love your chat shows but solving a regulatory question on one is some soft-ass shit.
Speaking of those irrelevant people on the TV panel: if we were supposed to be angry and frustrated as we see these various irrelevant voices losing the plot, then great, that worked. But it honestly seemed like we were supposed to care? what various academics and scholars and action group workers thought about this situation where a doctor followed hospital policy? Are you out of your gottam mind? How is any of this at all relevant or worth considering? How did it become about her character unrelated to being a doctor and — this is the problem– how was that not presented or interpreted as unreasonable?
The worst thing about that panel show, besides everything, was that one of those irrelevant people had the gall to make her apologize for the harm her ancestors have done to other people. I mean. She’s Jewish, by the way, if there were ever doubt about the antisemitism in London theatre that I go on and on about. Again, if the audience was supposed to grasp that this was all awful and insane to be doing to her, then I’m down, but the way it was presented and definitely received was more like ‘yeah this is good she needs to apologize for the way her ancestors have…been persecuted for thousands of years.’ I am so angry that the show put forward these tropes about Jews not to show that they are tropes or subvert them, but to present them as valid. The antisemitism in this show could have been framed to show why she faced unreasonable consequences, but instead it felt like it was a reason supporting the backlash that we were supposed to accept. Is that a problem with the direction, or the writing? Or, did they just want Jewishness to be part of the alleged villainy?
For the people who disagree: how is this not simply a case of “this doctor, who is a good doctor and did not do anything wrong medically or in terms of her hospital’s rules and regs, is not a very warm person and people really don’t like her and even though she didn’t do anything ‘wrong’, she made an unfeeling but permissible call on something completely unrelated to being an actual doctor, which I don’t like, but understand”? You can think that and accept that, but to then force all these insane consequences as a result of not liking a largely sensible choice she made is, well, absolutely insane.
I’m so frustrated because yes, it was about how this simple question, of whether or not the doctor made an appropriate call, became a question of whether or not she was a good person. But instead of saying ‘yeah and isn’t that irrelevant to what’s happening, that that’s what the societal conversation morphed into? isn’t that awful?’ the play seems to be saying that it’s VALID! It is NOT! And it wasn’t framing it as a ‘isn’t this complicated’ question either! It is NOT supposed to be complicated.
Another wtf as a palate cleanser from the bigger issues: the time with her teenager friend didn’t pay off. We learned a little more about her but nothing to explain why we listened to her talk for 15 minutes about having sex in high school. Was this a test.
Issue number 2: The play presents abortion pills as dangerous.
The part that has really stuck with me and made my blood boil is that this show vilifies abortion pills in an ignorant, dangerous way. FYI abortion pills are very safe, and effective the majority of the time. They are able to be ordered online in many countries because this has been proved, as long as you take them as directed. The teenage girl in question died after ordering and taking them in secret — the play repeats this in a way that presents the pills as the killer, full stop, no context. Abortion pills killed her. But if you listen closely, you learn she was way farther along (I think I remember she was 4 months pregnant?) than you can be to take the pills. THAT is why she had a fatal reaction. You can only take the pills if you are under 10 weeks along. With reproductive rights under attack it’s easy to see audiences largely accept from this story that abortion pills are dangerous, and thus susceptible to Tory swaying that they should be outlawed, or less easily available. If there was any line where a character clearly explained that they are usually safe and shouldn’t be vilified, it was drowned out in the onslaught of clear but false messaging that they are dangerous and fatal. This is absolute bullshit, and so much of the dialogue around the pills reminded me of Republican propaganda. I truly cannot believe that anyone who cares about reproductive freedom could sit there and accept what was being fed to mostly older white audiences, the demographic that loves to vote these rights away.
OH I ALMOST FORGOT MY BIGGEST ISSUE: People were all ‘she made such a meanie decision to not let the priest in BECAUSE SHE’S JEWISHHHHH! that’s why! she hates Catholics!!’ (And the play doesn’t really do anything to contradict that unbelievably offensive bs). And aside from all the other good reasons for her decision, she says she didn’t know if the girl was really a devout Catholic, since she wasn’t lucid and her parents weren’t around. The villagers with pitchforks argue “but she had a cross necklace!”, and Juliet says “well a lot of young people wear them it’s trendy” — TRUE. What my biggest issue is: at no point does anyone say the very valid argument that, it’s well within reason for the doctor to have questioned whether the girl was a devout Catholic SINCE SHE HAD HAD AN ABORTION! THAT’S LIKE THEIR ONLY RULE!!!!! jfc.
A Taste of Honey at Trafalgar Studios: Slice of Really, Really, Really Crappy Life
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is A Taste of Honey, currently playing at London’s Trafalgar Studios until February 29…which is a thing this year!
Okay not to be like controversial but this play is the reason I help people get abortions. WOOF. In A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 that she famously wrote when she was 19, a mother and daughter in the north west of England are down on their luck and also are the most annoying people ever. This interpersonal drama throws a bunch of ideas at the stage – classism, homosexuality, interracial couples, teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, not much sticks, so there’s only a dusting of various would-be interesting topics and the only real story seems to be, at least to me, these people suck and it’s sad but they suck. It’s a ‘slice of life’ drama but reminded me too much of Phoebe’s take on a certain classic (see below). Strong performances and a solid production can’t completely fix the insufficiencies in this play, although it helps to remember it’s hella old.
Okay the ‘real story’ is that there’s a bad mother who had a child she probably didn’t want and definitely didn’t know what to do with and now her child has a child she probably doesn’t want and definitely doesn’t know what to do with. One thing that it has going for it is, despite being written 60 years ago, it still feels relevant, since sad awful people with sad lives still abound and enjoy making everyone else as sad and awful as they are. In A Taste of Honey, Helen, the mother, is a wild woman who enjoys finding men to sleep with and drinking, oh my so much drinking, didn’t she hear about Dry January, and she does not enjoy having a teenage daughter who cramps her style. The teenage daughter, Jo, enjoys yelling at her mother for rundown lodgings and abandoning her to have flings with gross ass men (valid), as well has skipping school and having her own thang with a black sailor…and of course, getting pregnant. Instead of CALLING ME FOR HELP, Jo fulfills the whole predestined full-circle thing that Amy Sherman Palladino wanted to achieve with the end of Gilmore Girls but didn’t, and becomes yet another young woman with a baby determining the rest of her life, just like her mother, and the cycle of being stuck in a such a way continues. It’s a powerful subject matter, for sure, but it’s presented as merely depressing and sad. It does show somewhat that they are victims of circumstances, but they also aren’t good people.
The performances are pretty good, some great. Durone Stokes’ Jimmie the sailor boy is wonderful, a strong performer who somehow makes the guy who impregnates a teenage girl and then peaces out one of the more likable characters on the stage. Jodie Prenger as Helen starts off with a bang as they’ve incorporated musical numbers into the show, and damn she can fill a house with that powerful voice. It helps to be impressed with her singing before you want to scream at her (character). She is a bad bad mother. I’ve just binge-watched Spinning Out (please talk to me about it if you have, oh my god that ending) and it’s full of everyone calling January Jones a bad mother (which like, we knew, did you not watch Mad Men) but WOOF, she’s a saint compared to Helen. Prenger’s performance is strong, yet Helen is such an unlikable character that you can’t help but despise her, pity her a little for her circumstances, sure, but still despise her. Same for Jo (Gemma Dobson), whose youth and ignorance helps a little but she still sucks, especially in her treatment and dismissal of gay new best friend Geoff (a strong Stuart Thompson), who only ever tried to help and asked only for friendship in return and she was such a c word to him and she let her mother be the queen of all c words to him. Geoff was the only really decent person in the show and he was treated like dirt so like what am I supposed to learn except that I’m right in hating most people.
So my gripes are mostly with the play, which I guess is excused by its age and its being purposefully about people who suck and how they suffer systemically, yes, but also how they personally are not good. Regarding this production, my gripe is mainly the partial musicalization it underwent: If you are going make it musical (not A Musical but musical) and have an onstage band, then be consistent. The first act had some rousing numbers (that Prenger though) and used music well, but the second act had Geoff sing “Nature Boy” (with UGH annoying audience members whispering to their friends ‘OMG THE MOULIN ROUGE SONG’ like YEAH WE KNOW, THE TIME KNIFE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY IT RIGHT NOW) and maybe one reprise but nothing else. The second act also dragged, so the lack of music to help out was obvious, so much so that the onstage musicians looked suuuuper bored despite all their effort not to, and I didn’t envy their having to sit through that dull second act every day with little to do.
Despite all my grievances, the heaviness of the play hit me where the characters and story didn’t. There’s something in there that sticks with you, a sadness about these people and subsequently all sad people like them. If you like wallowing in hopelessness about humanity, go nuts.
INFORMATION
The show runs 2 ½ hours with an interval. It’s playing in Trafalgar Studios Studio One until February 29. Trafalgar Studios is always an annoying theatre because if you are seated above row G, there’s nooowhere to wait/mill around, just one way too narrow hallway with the upstairs bathrooms, also way too narrow and small. If you can sit in the front 5-6 rows, it’s much better because your bathroom is through the bar, where you might actually grab a foot of space to yourself.
There is smoking. One day someone might successfully defend the use of smoking in the theatre but that day has not come yet.
