The Tony Awards are Sunday! Here's What Should Happenby Randi / June 7, 2019Full disclosure, before seeing the new musical version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button I assumed it was going to be hilarious. Really, you’re taking the decent-but-not-loved Brad Pitt movie and turning it into a musical? Good luck with that. I assumed it would go the route of recent screen-to-stage West End musical disasters like Made in Dagenham and Bend It Like Beckham. But I could not have been more wrong. No, as the lot of us sitting in the ‘Little’ black box studio of the Southwark Playhouse pathetically blowing our noses and sobbing during Act II can attest, I could not have been more wrong. Rather than lazily taking a known property and shoving in songs here and there as everyone else seems to do and calling it a ‘new musical’ instead of a ‘garbage fire’, the Button team did what so few can do and made something meaningful and worthwhile. They’ve taken the original F. Scott Fitzgerald story and reset it as a Cornish coastal folk tale, with an underpinning of mysticism and with inventive folk music that successfully builds an entire world, and gives poignant, impressive new life to this story.
Having its world premiere at London’s Southwark Playhouse these past few weeks, Button continued this very exciting and very inspiring new trend of original British scores being on the up and up after about a decade of swimming in the shallow end. Although folk music isn’t the kind I’d be listening to at home, this score from Jethro Compton and Darren Clark served the show well and helped convey the necessary mythology and emotion in a way that classic showtunes, for one, couldn’t have. Making Button a Celtic-inspired legend was a smart creative decision, bringing the tale from its jazz-age Americana roots and establishing it instead on the Cornwall coast, with its UK traits of the stiff upper lip, the hardworking fishermen, the omnipresent pubs.
For those of you not up on your F. Scott short stories or who somehow didn’t see the 2008 Brad Pitt – Cate Blanchett – Taraji P. Henson absolute ROMP of a movie (it’s not it’s sad) (but really good) (I know I said above it wasn’t beloved but like it was really solid and honestly thinking about the ending makes me quite emotional like old lady Cate holding the baby version of her former love as it dies???? whaaat??) (Oh ps SPOILERS just there before), Benjamin Button is this cursed child (not related to Harry Potter) born as an old man who then spends his life aging in reverse. I have to admit I’m not up on my Effe Scott Fitzy but in the movie, he’s just a creepy old-man-looking baby-sized 80-year-old or what have you, but in the stage version, he pops out of his OBVIOUSLY DISTRAUGHT mother a full-size, full-talking, full-thinking 70-year-old man. (Which yeah you understand why his mother would jump off the cliffs but I think her song “Davey Jones’ Locker” should be cut or trimmed, like yes you just had a full-grown-gramps instead of a baby and I’m sorry but we don’t feel enough sympathy for you right off the bat to connect fully with your downward spiral.)You’re probably thinking, um how did they do this on stage? And the answer is with puppetry, with puppets made out of, well, garbage, pretty much (wicker baskets and lots of plastic bottles, hooray for reusing (recycling isn’t as good as we were all told, please try to actually reduce your plastic use and as here, reuse! PSA)) and impressive maneuvering by the hard-working five-person ensemble. It was really impressive stuff, and funny when it was plastic-bottle children later on.
Speaking of the hard-working ensemble, these five actors and musicians, all onstage mostly the whole show, weave in and out of various characters and play multiple instruments as they tell this tale in a most impressive manner. Well one actor, James Marlowe, does very little weaving since he plays Benjamin for the majority of his life (they need a few more visual aids to show the passing decades, like maybe losing the mustache when he talks about not needing to shave anymore, adding a few youthful accessories or playing with wigs, things like that). And one weave was my biggest pet peeve of the show since it was completely unnecessary: Benjamin’s love interest is named Elowen, and she’s played winningly in Act I by Philippa Hogg. In Act II, as Elowen grows older and Benjamin grows younger, Rosalind Ford takes over as Elowen. The passing of the character between the two actresses is actually done in quite a lovely way – but it’s not only unnecessary, it takes away from the character development. For one, Philippa created the bond with the audience, especially in the wonderful, moving “The Moon and the Sea”, and so it’s jarring to switch halfway through. For another, more important reason, um, Philippa and Rosalind both look about the same age, so making one play only the old lady version is suuuuuuper weird and it feels wrong. It’s a shame because Rosalind’s big Act II song as Elowen is truly stunningly delivered, but for the good of the overall show, Phillippa should play Elowen the whole time (Rosalind has enough to do otherwise whereas Philippa in Act II felt underused). We’re supposed to be focusing on how Benjamin is changing in odd ways, not having the ‘normal’ people do that.
Aside from that quibble, Compton’s clever direction was a feat, and despite the tiny stage and the tiny black room, you could sense the wind and waves crashing against the shores of Cornwall. Despite a slow start that would be much helped in the next production by trimming one of Benjamin’s parents’ songs (the weakest material is over with right at the start at least), they built this world pretty quickly, drawing the audience in fully and keeping us there, on board for all the twists and heartbreaks of the story. I loved the a cappella Celtic theme song of the show and how well it captured the right mood (although I think it had one too many reprises?). Even all the references to space travel paid off in a lovely, surprising, poignant way. A lesser quality show would have drawn eyerolls at, e.g., the reprise of the super-fun-every-action-is-connected song “A Matter of Time” when it tries to pull that sad as hell shit at the end, but instead we were all gutted along with the characters. It really worked. And then as the heartbreak keeps building in a really beautiful way, the audience, like I said, was sobbing. I can’t believe what this little show managed to pull off, but it was an extraordinary first effort at mounting this new musical.
INFORMATION
I have to give a shout-out to whoever designed the programmes, which for some reason only cost £1. They were the best programmes ever. Actually interesting notes from the creatives? A FULL BREAKDOWN of what it cost to mount this production and how they raised the money?? Show everyone how it’s done, son.
While this initial run is now over, hopefully it will come back in a slightly revised but no less fantastic form soon.
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“Electra” at the Old Vic Will Do Some Serious Messing With Your Head
Crazy Eyes Ghostface Killah
Through Dec. 20. If in London, you must see this. It’s f-ing nuts but Scott Thomas is a must-see.
When it comes to Greek tragedies, I always assume the main character is going to die at the end. But while some important people do indeed die, spoiler, Electra lives, and nothing unexpected happens at all. So this was almost like a feel-good Greek tragedy!
When it comes to Greek tragedies, I always assume the main character is going to die at the end. But while some important people do indeed die, spoiler, Electra lives, and nothing unexpected happens at all. So this was almost like a feel-good Greek tragedy!
Okay that’s not entirely true. “Electra”, the Sophocles version, not the Euripides, though I imagine they are pretty much identical because TRUE HISTORY, is currently playing at the Old Vic in London and starring the fabulous miraculous sort-of-French wonder Kristin Scott Thomas. “Electra” is a f-ing madhouse of a depressing story, and here, played by an unrecognizable, balls-to-the-wall crazy and fully committed KST, it will tear you apart emotionally and leave you not knowing how to think or feel about anything. (Or just this.) But it’s actually predictable and almost tame compared to other ancient works of its ilk, especially because everything Electra prays for and sets out to do actually happens.
In that regard, the show is kind of boring. Who wants straightforward Greek tragedies! I expected more plot twists. More shocking murderings. It’s actually the background story that’s dramatic, not anything we learn during the 100 minutes of drama. So, if you are familiar with this play, seeing it presents you with more of an emotional roller coaster just in the character of Electra.
Are you familiar with the story? It is indeed nuts. We begin our scene in ancient Mycenae, which the characters here pronounce “my-see-nee” and I have always said “my-sen-eye” so already up is down and black is white. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and/or Argos, both of which are said at times and ancient scholars think could have been the same region, but British people don’t care because they hear ‘Argos’ and titter amongst themselves thinking about their beloved discount home goods shoppe, anyway, Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. I KNOW. This was actually years ago, and now Clytty and ThroatPhlegm are inhabiting Aggy’s home as King and Queen of Mycergos, with some of their children. Electra long refuses to act as a member of Aegisthus’s household, so she looks and acts more like a servant. Their son and Electra’s stars, moon, sky, and whole universe Orestes was exiled, from fear of his revenging his father, and has been missing for years. Electra has spent these years pretty much squatting in the dirt outside and praying for Orestes’s return.
In that regard, the show is kind of boring. Who wants straightforward Greek tragedies! I expected more plot twists. More shocking murderings. It’s actually the background story that’s dramatic, not anything we learn during the 100 minutes of drama. So, if you are familiar with this play, seeing it presents you with more of an emotional roller coaster just in the character of Electra.
Are you familiar with the story? It is indeed nuts. We begin our scene in ancient Mycenae, which the characters here pronounce “my-see-nee” and I have always said “my-sen-eye” so already up is down and black is white. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and/or Argos, both of which are said at times and ancient scholars think could have been the same region, but British people don’t care because they hear ‘Argos’ and titter amongst themselves thinking about their beloved discount home goods shoppe, anyway, Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. I KNOW. This was actually years ago, and now Clytty and ThroatPhlegm are inhabiting Aggy’s home as King and Queen of Mycergos, with some of their children. Electra long refuses to act as a member of Aegisthus’s household, so she looks and acts more like a servant. Their son and Electra’s stars, moon, sky, and whole universe Orestes was exiled, from fear of his revenging his father, and has been missing for years. Electra has spent these years pretty much squatting in the dirt outside and praying for Orestes’s return.
Power squatting
KST’s inhabiting of Electra occurs not only in her youthful crazy dancing around, dragging her toes along the sand, but also in her squatting. It’s more of an African tribal dancer squat than a weight lifter squat, and on its own it is pretty compelling. She looks like a bug. And a child. It all just works somehow.
If you didn’t know the story before, you start out definitely on Electra’s side. You want her to get her shit together, sure; the physical manifestation of her deteriorating mental stability is pitiful (and astounding). When you learn why she hates her mother so much, you’re like, yeah, okay, I see your point. What do you do if the one parent you have left murdered the other one? That’s pretty much as dark as you can get, psychologically.
But then we meet Clytemnestra herself, who is like a not-as-cool Regina from “Once Upon A Time” (mostly the cleavage), and we learn more of the back story. Ready for the Greek Tragedy Quotient ® to go up a few thousand notches? Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because Agamemnon killed their daughter. He sacrificed her to win the war or some total b.s. like that, and Clytemnestra believes he did it for his brother Menelaus’s sake, because Menny didn’t have enough children to spare, and Aggy was like “yo bruh I have at least 3 daughters, I can spare at least 1.” Girls be worthless! So now you’re thinking, hold the phone there, Electra – your dad killed your sister, to appease the gods of war and some such b.s., and you didn’t really care? Umm that’s not exactly the sign of a fully functioning mental state. Once we know this much, we feel a little more sympathy for Clytemnestra. Sure, more violence is never the answer to violence, as this cycle usually begets more violence AND causes you to say violence four times in one sentence, but dayum, at least now you kind of get why she wanted to kill her husband. As far as reasons go, it’s a pretty good one.
Of course, the whole cold-hearted first-degree-murdery plotting of the killing argues against her heat-of-passion defense, plus there was the whole adultery aspect and making her lover the new king. So she’s not completely excused by revenge. But it’s not as clear-cut as we once thought. It’s not as simple as Electra wants us to believe.
Okay, so now we know more, the audience is grappling with heavy moral questions, awful people and awful things abound, demanding our attention and demanding to know where our sympathies lie. Clytemnestra’s story pulls at certain sympathies at first, but then she acts like a total crazy power-hungry warlord. Her ‘World of Warcraft’ style gold-plated dress doesn’t help. She’s not all sunshine. Then we have Electra, who has completely lost her shit, who is dancing and power-squatting all over the sandy stage, and is devoted without hesitation to her hatred of her mother and Aegisthus. But the all-encompassing hatred seems oddly fresh, so many years after the tragedy, and we realize it’s out of necessity. Electra needs to hold fast to this hatred to give reason and purpose to her wasted life and wasted mind. She has to commit to the intensity of her mad hatred, or else any doubt that seeps in could make her realize that it was all in vain, her resolute refusal to act as a member of Aegisthus’s house, to care for her own health at all, to live any kind of life. If she let second thoughts in, the strangely strong structure of hatred and revenge would crumble and leave her even more debilitated. This characterization reminded me of “West Side Story”, when Anita tells Maria that Tony killed her brother. Maria can only say (sing) “I have a love and it’s all that I have, Right or wrong what else can I do”, because it was all she had, and if she let the fact that her love killed her brother enter her head, she’d lose her f-ing mind. She, like Electra, makes a survivalist decision to focus on a sort of half-truth rather than let the whole picture screw with their version of reality.
And Kristin Scott Thomas portrays all of this, somehow, almost even without her words. Her physicality alone tells you everything you need to know, how her experiences have rendered her nearly inoperable. You so feel for her that, when her brother Orestes actually returns home to enact the revenge they’ve all been waiting and praying for, you actually wish them well for a moment. Yay Electra and Orestes! Hug it out! Get well! Do your thang! Then you realize that their thang is double homicide and you close one eye as all the bloodshed happens. And then it ends. No seriously, they kill the king and queen and say “Yay revenge! High five!” and then it ends. Good show!
If you didn’t know the story before, you start out definitely on Electra’s side. You want her to get her shit together, sure; the physical manifestation of her deteriorating mental stability is pitiful (and astounding). When you learn why she hates her mother so much, you’re like, yeah, okay, I see your point. What do you do if the one parent you have left murdered the other one? That’s pretty much as dark as you can get, psychologically.
But then we meet Clytemnestra herself, who is like a not-as-cool Regina from “Once Upon A Time” (mostly the cleavage), and we learn more of the back story. Ready for the Greek Tragedy Quotient ® to go up a few thousand notches? Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because Agamemnon killed their daughter. He sacrificed her to win the war or some total b.s. like that, and Clytemnestra believes he did it for his brother Menelaus’s sake, because Menny didn’t have enough children to spare, and Aggy was like “yo bruh I have at least 3 daughters, I can spare at least 1.” Girls be worthless! So now you’re thinking, hold the phone there, Electra – your dad killed your sister, to appease the gods of war and some such b.s., and you didn’t really care? Umm that’s not exactly the sign of a fully functioning mental state. Once we know this much, we feel a little more sympathy for Clytemnestra. Sure, more violence is never the answer to violence, as this cycle usually begets more violence AND causes you to say violence four times in one sentence, but dayum, at least now you kind of get why she wanted to kill her husband. As far as reasons go, it’s a pretty good one.
Of course, the whole cold-hearted first-degree-murdery plotting of the killing argues against her heat-of-passion defense, plus there was the whole adultery aspect and making her lover the new king. So she’s not completely excused by revenge. But it’s not as clear-cut as we once thought. It’s not as simple as Electra wants us to believe.
Okay, so now we know more, the audience is grappling with heavy moral questions, awful people and awful things abound, demanding our attention and demanding to know where our sympathies lie. Clytemnestra’s story pulls at certain sympathies at first, but then she acts like a total crazy power-hungry warlord. Her ‘World of Warcraft’ style gold-plated dress doesn’t help. She’s not all sunshine. Then we have Electra, who has completely lost her shit, who is dancing and power-squatting all over the sandy stage, and is devoted without hesitation to her hatred of her mother and Aegisthus. But the all-encompassing hatred seems oddly fresh, so many years after the tragedy, and we realize it’s out of necessity. Electra needs to hold fast to this hatred to give reason and purpose to her wasted life and wasted mind. She has to commit to the intensity of her mad hatred, or else any doubt that seeps in could make her realize that it was all in vain, her resolute refusal to act as a member of Aegisthus’s house, to care for her own health at all, to live any kind of life. If she let second thoughts in, the strangely strong structure of hatred and revenge would crumble and leave her even more debilitated. This characterization reminded me of “West Side Story”, when Anita tells Maria that Tony killed her brother. Maria can only say (sing) “I have a love and it’s all that I have, Right or wrong what else can I do”, because it was all she had, and if she let the fact that her love killed her brother enter her head, she’d lose her f-ing mind. She, like Electra, makes a survivalist decision to focus on a sort of half-truth rather than let the whole picture screw with their version of reality.
And Kristin Scott Thomas portrays all of this, somehow, almost even without her words. Her physicality alone tells you everything you need to know, how her experiences have rendered her nearly inoperable. You so feel for her that, when her brother Orestes actually returns home to enact the revenge they’ve all been waiting and praying for, you actually wish them well for a moment. Yay Electra and Orestes! Hug it out! Get well! Do your thang! Then you realize that their thang is double homicide and you close one eye as all the bloodshed happens. And then it ends. No seriously, they kill the king and queen and say “Yay revenge! High five!” and then it ends. Good show!
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.
