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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Touching the Void: Please Don’t Ever Make Me Ice Climb
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Touching the Void, playing at the Duke of Yorks Theatre in London until February 29.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of outer space. Whenever I watch a movie like Gravity, my head is usually in my lap for most of the space parts and while I hyperventilate I’m like ‘please for the love of god never ever make me go into space.’ And now, making me climb a mountain where you need to use ice axes and where as soon as you take a break you get hypothermia sounds so much worse. Do not make me do this.
That I kept my shit together (well enough) during this stress-test-gone-insane of a play to realize how well they were telling this story is a testament to just how well they did it. I feel so lucky to be, I think, one of the very very few people in the audience and maybe in the world who had nooooo idea about this true story before I saw this play. There’s a really famous documentary about the real people who did this climb and what went wrong and I guess ‘everyone’ knows about it and I knew nnnnothing about it even though it won a BAFTA. (Both works are based on a book, and I don’t want to tell you who wrote the book because that’s a spoiler and I don’t futz with spoilers.) I can’t compare the play to the documentary, as a result, but I can say that if you don’t know the story, holy wow are you in for a wild ride. And given the rest of the audience’s reaction, I’m pretty sure it will be just as gripping and impressive if you do know the story. But I am so grateful that I got to experience this thrilling theatre as a blank slate.
In 1985, Joe Simpson (Josh Williams (those are like the same name)) and Simon Yates (Edward Hayter) set out to become the first climbers to reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, a mountain climb so difficult that no one had done it and yet these two bros are like oh but we can do it and we should do the west face because it’s impossible and also we’ll climb the old fashioned way, just the two of us with no team to help us so like YEAH they’re GONNA die. The play begins with a wake post-tragedy, as Joe’s sister Sarah (Fiona Hampton) attempts to understand why her brother felt the need to do crazy bananas shit like this. I was unsure at the beginning of the ability to translate this story to the stage, because the wake start felt rough and struggled to get off on the right foot. (Also, I couldn’t help but feel anger at Joe for putting his sister through this, as well as the family we don’t see, but that’s a whole nother conversation about living your life I guess.) The super loud booming club music pounding through the theatre before showtime (and during the interval, PASS) didn’t help. That interval music is even odder considering the action that comes before it.
But rather quickly, once they started telling the story via flashback, so it seemed, and really once they started climbing (even Sarah’s climb on the chairs), it kicked off and became riveting. With Tom Miller’s direction and incredible physicality from the cast, doubts about this story’s stageworthiness dissipated. Somehow, watching them climb onstage made for truly gripping theatre, thanks to the brilliant set design and climbing choreography. You’d think that the biggest difference between the play and the movie, and where the movie wins out, is the ability to show the actual mountain and their actual climbing. But how they recreate it on an enormous dinosaur skeleton-made-out-of-printer-paper sort of thing is mind-blowing. And sure it’s probably incredible to see all this action on the real mountain in the movie, but what they accomplished onstage is super impressive.
Williams’ physical performance in Act II is even more impressive, and I completely bought that I was watching an injured man trying to move at all. I saw his pain and suffering and it felt real. The cast overall was good, and any weakness I thought I recognized in Hampton in the beginning was just my difficulty with the opening gambit, as in Act II she and everyone really shine, even Richard (Patrick McNamee), the annoying guitar-playing dork, hitting the right notes for needed comic relief.
How the story unfolds is shocking and emotional and exciting and a surefire way to raise your blood pressure, and if you have anxiety you’ll def need to prepare yourself. But I mean all that in the best way. I still can’t believe this is a true story. And I still can’t believe people would choose to do things like this on their own volition. Please do not make me.
INFORMATION
The show is about 2 hours 20 minutes, with the first act ending at our performance at 20:37.
At the Duke of Yorks, I recommend sitting in the circle, because that’s ground level. I forgot and was in the stalls and the whole being below ground thing is no fun when you try to leave. Also, the Ladies bathroom is right next to the house right door of the circle (the same one you climb the stairs to if you’re in the front stalls). For this show especially, you want to make sure you have a clear view all the way up – do not sit in the back of the stalls.
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at Trafalgar Studios: Faaaaak.
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which opened at Trafalgar Studios in London last night.
It’s a shame that Trafalgar Studios and the Old Vic haven’t teamed up and then joined with anti-population environmentalists to present a special double bill of Lungs and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. The former, coming to the Old Vic this month, presents the story of a modern-day couple deliberating the ethical implication of having kids when the world is burning down. (So, me and all my friends. So much for theatre as escapism.) Joe Egg is the Part 2 of Terrible Things to Worry About: what happens if you decide to have kids and they aren’t born healthy, every parent’s worst fear. Joe Egg, the 1967 play by Peter Nichols – who died two weeks before previews of this production started, confirming the whole ‘this is the darkest timeline’ vibe (RIP (ok that makes me sound very cold but he was 92 so like really well done, Peter, amazing life)) – concerns a couple whose 15-year-old daughter Josephine was born, in the words of one of their many shitty doctors, a ‘wegetable’.
It’s touted as a dark comedy, Joe Egg is, by people who have sick sense of humor, I guess, or by people who haven’t yet seen this heavy, depressing production. The ‘depressing’ I think is unavoidable in a play about the strain a disabled child has on a couple’s marriage, but the ‘heavy’ is due to this production and director (Simon Evans) not yet nailing the pacing. While the first act is somewhat slow, it’s compelling due to the strength of the interplay between the couple. When more actors show up in Act II, actors who have less command of their purpose and the tone they should be going for, the play loses some of its power.
And that command the first act has is commendable, considering having characters explain things directly to the audience is my least favorite theatre format (but at least this one does it better than the overrated Lehman Trilogy). Claire Skinner and Toby Stephens, as the couple Sheila and Brian, completely made me forget that they were actors, I was so invested in their struggles, so upset by their situation, so angered at the doctors’ screw-ups they recounted. It was heartbreaking to watch Sheila struggle with remnants of unmerited guilt, thinking that any part of it could be her fault. (And a great reminder not to have a home birth unless you have incredibly strong people present who would advocate for you.) If the show remained a two-hander, I think it would have been better off. (Sorry to husbo, who hates the phrase two-hander and for dern good reason — it should be four-hander, if you think about it, unless both actors are missing limbs.)
But the best thing to come from this show is the casting of Storme Toolis (WHAT A NAME) as Josephine. Toolis has cerebral palsy, and – if you can believe it – is the first disabled (I’m sorry if I’m using terrible language; please tell me if there are terms I should be using instead but this is what I’ve seen in other pubs) actor to EVER play the title role on the West End. This means they’ve had able-bodied actors drool and have their heads hanging off the side of their wheelchair and mutter some gibberish, pretending to be disabled, which seems…gross. And this important casting is largely due to Toolis’s own work as an activist for disabled actors, as she has vocally campaigned for the somehow revolutionary idea that disabled parts should be played by disabled actors.
And likewise, the play feels important, but in a manner where it’s hard to grasp what it’s trying to say besides the last word in my headline. It’s just…so f-ing sad for everyone involved. (Well not for Pam and Freddie (the Act II interlopers); those jackwagons can go eat a bag o’ dicks.) Aside from a few funny lines, I’m not sure how it could be described as a comedy. It’s super depressing. There are several points where you fully believe Josephine has died. And when the biggest questions raised by the drama are whether her father could go through with causing her death, and what that kind of mindset could do to his marriage – and what this situation in general has done to it – I don’t know what’s supposed to be funny. It’s just really, really sad. Provocative and worth this dramatic treatment, but sad.
INFORMATION
Honestly considering the age range (old to very old) it was a good audience.
The theatre needs a huge redo, though. Trafalgar Studios might be the worst theatre in London. Whoever designed the toilets should be tried at The Hague. You can’t get to the stalls if someone is washing their hands, there’s just no room. And in the classic London bathroom tradition, you can’t open the stall door to leave the stall unless you pretty much stand in the toilet. HOW DID SOMEONE GET PAID TO DESIGN THIS?
In the theatre itself it’s no picnic either. The seats don’t have armrests, so if you are sitting next to a stranger or two, you spend the entire show trying to shrink your shoulder width so that you aren’t pressing into each other. NOT VERY FUN.
This show also joins in on my least favorite trend of London theatre – having characters smoke. There’s a lot of herbal cigarette use, which is warned about yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s justified. I’ve seen at least two dozen shows in the past year with characters smoking onstage, and it has never once added anything to the production, except carcinogens for audience members and cast alike. STOP DOING THIS. I don’t understand how it’s still legal.
One thing that is not warned about – there is a toy gun that looks very real, and at one point an actor points and shoots it into the audience, so if that is the sort of thing that bothers you/if you are American, be warned.
The show is 2 hours 30 minutes, with the first act running 1 hour and the second act longer (which is usually a sign that the second act should have been trimmed).
