24 Hours in Washington, D.C., if You Can Stand the Companyby Randi / July 30, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The Bridges of Madison County at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Listen to the original cast album instead.
Jason Robert Brown’s nearly impeccable score for The Bridges of Madison County, one of the most gorgeous in musical theatre, begins with the riveting introduction “To Build a Home”, in which Francesca recounts leaving a war-torn Italy and building a life for the past few decades in farmland America with her U.S. soldier husband. As soon as this song began in the original production and redefined what the word ‘Iowa’ could be, you knew this show was going to be special. However, as soon as it begins in this particular production at the Menier Chocolate Factory, you know this show is going to be long. Francesca famously sings “This is Albany…this is Buffalo…this is Cleveland…this is South Bend…” as she travels deeper into the USA. I found myself rewriting these lyrics during the rest of the show: “This is tedious…this is terrible…this is wearisome…this is boring…” And I must remind you, this is one of my favorite musicals of all time.
Now, I’m a fan of Jenna Russell, a beloved fixture of London theatre (seriously though, it’s like the West End casts the same people over and over; where is the London Bernie Tesley when you need one?), but she and her costar Edward Baker-Duly (as the love interest Robert) are so miscast as to make you wonder if the casting directors were forking with everyone, or high. They’re definitely at least high, along with director Trevor Nunn. Yes, Nunn, the celebrated director who recently helmed a wonderful Fiddler at the Menier, is also the wrong fit for this show, making it longer (as you’d expect with him) but also mind-numbingly dull. In theory, the smaller theatre should work for this intimate show, but it just makes it easier to see what’s wrong.
If you don’t know Bridges, the whole point of this story is to watch two people fall in love when they shouldn’t, and to feel their chemistry and understand their deep love even though you know it shouldn’t exist and can’t last. Maybe you know the famous Meryl Streep-Crazy Old Man movie, maybe you know the book; if so, you know this is a paperbook romance kind of jawn and you gotta just lean in and love it. With the musical version, you feel their love through the music, this soaring, heartrending music that beautifully lets you understand their love and maybe think that it should exist after all. There’s not a lot of plot to that – the success of the musical relies entirely on watching the chemistry build between these two characters, which in turn relies entirely on expression through the music.
But when the score isn’t sung as it’s meant to be, then no emotion gets expressed, and no chemistry builds, and the whole foundation of the musical is lost, with nothing for anything else to build upon. The original stars, Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale, are supremely beautiful people, which helped their insane chemistry set that stage on fire. But they also have some of the most powerfully gorgeous voices in the world, and they were so skillful at expressing a gamut of emotion and thoughtfulness through this music that they set new benchmarks in musical theatre. Here, the leads can barely eke out the right notes, and when they hit them, they do not soar; they are barely audible. The actors are also markedly older, which the show semi-acknowledges by changing the ‘for 18 years’ line in the opening number to ‘for 20 years’, although that’s not really it chief. The age increase works on paper, to have Francesca’s loneliness and longing even more long-standing, but it’s still simply the wrong actors. There is no passion, and this show relies on passion. The two have a bit of chemistry, but not the required bucketloads, and it only extends to each other and not to the audience. The entire first act is literally watching these two wrestle with their emotions (while the second is watching them literally wrestle) as their attraction builds and builds. Here, with nothing simmering on the stage, there’s literally nothing happening, nothing to watch, nothing to experience, and the first act is like watching paint dry. And with no soaring vocals, there’s no story to tell, no characters to build. For example, the second act song “Almost Real”, one of the most brilliant character backstory songs written, helps you understand everything Francesca ever thought and felt and how she made her decisions that led her here – if done right. (I also didn’t enjoy Nunn’s addition of having Chiara, Francesca’s sister, say the relevant lines while Francesca sang them.) It’s honestly a shame above all that these exceptional songs aren’t given their due.
The supporting cast fares much better, though how much of that is a result of comparison is a good question. The much-loved Joni-Mitchell-esque song “Another Life” was a bit of a disappointment, with the actress playing Robert’s ex-wife never really capturing the emotion it requires (theme o’ the day), but she still sounded lovely. The comical neighbors Marge and Charlie were wonderful, with Gillian Kirkpatrick stealing every scene she could, and Paul F. Monaghan performing a lovely rendition of “When I’m Gone”, a soulful gospel-y song that without fail makes me cry at its simple but profound lyrics, although the too-long between-verse staging here was overblown. Even Bud (Dale Rapley), Francesca’s thick but well-meaning husband, came off amazingly, and I found myself eager for him to return to the stage even for his super depressing song, just because it meant the leads were off. When that’s the dynamic of Bridges, you know something is wrong. And when the godforsaken “State Road 21” is the best performed song in the show, you really know something is wrong.
To top off all the distressing disappointment on display here, every single song was at least a full beat too slow, adding a good 15 minutes to the run time and making every song, already fucked from the poor casting and direction, sound like a dirge. They did this show dirty, and it deserves better.
INFORMATION
Bridges at the Menier (anyone else think ‘layches on the men-jay’ from I Love You, Man? No, just me?) runs about 2 hours 50 minutes and will play until September 14. If you want to look at your watch every two minutes to see if time is magically moving as quickly as you’d like, then by all means get tickets to this show – it won’t be hard; there were tons of empty seats on a Saturday night (which is a shame for any show, no matter how poorly I think of it). But if you want to appreciate one of the most gorgeous scores ever written for musical theatre as it should be experienced, then just watch this instead:
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Mr Burns: A Clever Dystopian Tale So Close to Being Great
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the recent streaming production of ‘Mr. Burns’ from the Guidhall School of Music & Drama. It was live-streamed in late May and then reshared for pick-your-own-time-with-the-ability-to-pause-it viewing (unbeatable) this past month.
Mr. Burns, Anne Washburn’s lauded (and somewhat divisive) 2012 play, analyzes how culture evolves over time, with the help of The Simpsons. In Washburn’s dystopian society, an apocalyptic event has wiped out most people and all the power — the proper stylized title is actually Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Overall, the play is fascinating in how it weaves details of a single episode of TV into markers of cultural importance over distinct time periods, in a fun (for Simpsons fans, not that the downer of a play is any fun) clever way of contemplating how history and culture are formed.
In this newest incarnation, I think it was hinted at that a virus did the people wiping part (gotta make shit relevant and more terrifying!), and the lack of sufficient people to attend to places like nuclear power plants did the rest. We meet a scraggly bunch of survivors around a campfire, where the zigzagging conversation intertwines stories of cities they’ve traveled to and what they found there, with a discussion about The Simpsons. The group tries to collectively share the play-by-play of the episode from memory – of course, as that’s all they have. It helps to be familiar with The Simpsons, especially the crucial episode Cape Feare – crucial for Simpsons fans, I believe (and musical theatre fans), and for appreciating this play.
This first act is filled with frustration and sadness — at the lack of knowledge about what’s going on in other parts of the country and who else has survived, as well as at their inability to ever truly find out what parts of the episode they are forgetting or misremembering. In this strongest part of the play, the emotional roller coaster from the excitement as the characters finally remember a line of dialogue, from the terror when someone new happens upon their location, from the grief and misery when they deliver their memorized lists of names of people they’re looking for, it’s a lot but it all feels earned.
But it’s the ensuing acts that show the cleverness of the play’s central concept. It jumps to 7 years later, when groups of survivors have become like traveling theatre troupes who perform — episodes of The Simpsons, especially Cape Feare. The way the seemingly casual campfire conversation has become one of the most fundamental parts of the society they’re forming is so interesting. It’s something that most people remember watching at some point, but they’ve latched onto it and given it enhanced importance in this new world, seemingly just to share something they can believe is important. The details have gotten messier, the lines a little paraphrased, as memories have faded and altered. Strangely, the survivors have given the same reverence to the inclusion of commercials in their productions. While it’s interesting to see what kinds of things they think would be advertised, there is way too much time spent on showing us their commercials, and even more time spent on a non-Simpsons non-commercial musical performance. Details from this performance make it into the third act in compelling ways that support the central idea, but the same result is achieved with the Simpsons details alone.
And that third act is wild. It’s now 75 years later, and the society has developed what seems like a serious religion and candle-filled religious ritual based on what has lasted from this episode of The Simpsons. Mr. Burns, earning the title placement, is now a murderer trying to kill the entire Simpsons family, and, well, doing so. The entire act is this religious ritual, a music-filled performance of what’s now their sacred stories. The once remembered details now have obviously been completely transformed, mutated into something unrecognizable but still with familiar aspects – the character names, the boat, the singing, the Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics. It’s an insane ride. I loved how all of these sections show how culture and history adapt over time, as certain things are remembered, misremembered, and reconstructed in human societies. It’s a reminder that the history we know and study all depends on a human’s retelling of an event, and humans are imperfect, biased historians. The way certain details hold fast through all three time periods in the play, and the way others morph into unrecognizable and surprising new cultural tenets, are a fascinating reflection of culture and how tenuous it is.
However. This third act is too long and overindulgent. It takes the unnecessary and overly long musical number of the second act and forking runs with it. This section is so long and chaotic and disconnected from the emotional beats the previous two sections had managed to achieve that I actually got annoyed. I may have audibly sighed. It didn’t help that the singing wasn’t great (I won’t say any more about the actors, who were all fine, because I think they’re students and like, they’re not done training). But even so this act was overall Too Much, nearly negating all the clever goodwill from before.
Information:
Run & running time: Mr. Burns runs about 2 1/2 hours. (It should run about 2 hours 10 minutes.) Hopefully Guildhall will release the stream again, or a new production (that makes cuts) will come, because it is such an interesting play.
Technicals: The stream froze every 5 minutes. For the amount of streaming theatre we’ve watched in the past year (it’s a shittonne), we’ve really only had issues when the stream is set up to defend a higher quality image instead of reducing the picture quality when necessary and focusing on continuous play and sound. I don’t know how to describe it I’m not a computer. But that’s the issue most of the time. Always choose continuous play over the image quality mes babies.
Toilets & Audience: Watched at home baby!!
What antisemitic thing did I notice this time*: The programme describes the ragtag group of characters as ‘schlocky’, which is a Yiddish-derived word used to describe cheap, junky goods, so it was very much not used properly. [*A new question I will probably need to ask more going forward! (Obvs I am joking about it being offensive…just to my history as an editor.)]
Curtains the Musical Whodunnit is a Bloated But Fun Romp
Today’s theatre review is Curtains, currently playing at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre until January 11.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first. I love David Hyde Pierce (who doesn’t?), but I am still a bit of a salty salty dog over his semi-surprise Tony Award win over Raul Esparza (in Company) in 2007. DHP won for the then-new musical comedy-murder mystery Curtains, which I enjoyed on Broadway due to clever story-telling and pitch perfect casting, which, okay fine, included DHP’s flawless performance as one of the most inventive new musical theatre characters in recent memory. Now that the sting of Raul’s loss is somewhat faded, I was eager to see Curtains again without the resentment my younger self harbored over a nonsense award. Currently in the West End for just a few days more, and starring English comedian Jason Manford, I can newly appreciate Curtains as a fun romp of a show that despite its flaws guarantees a good time.
Curtains features a score by Kander & Ebb – I know – so right off the bat you’re like ‘oh this is for real.’ Though it doesn’t boast any future classics, the score is serviceable and fine, with some really good parts. I find the book, by Rupert Holmes, more impressive and funny. It helps that the story this musical tells is so clever: It’s opening night of a musical’s pre-Broadway premiere in Boston (I was just at one of those!), and the horrendously untalented leading lady is murdered during final bows! Egads! Lt. Frank Cioffi of the Boston PD is on the case, investigating cast and crew as they’re on lockdown in the theatre, which is too perfect for him since he is…an enormous musical theatre fan and amateur performer. I just love that SO MUCH. What a fantastic character! (I said that in Fred Armisen’s Mr Birch voice from Big Mouth, if you couldn’t tell but you could.) More murders happen and more twists and unexpected turns, but through it all the most important thing isn’t that people keep dying – it’s that a musical is being made, people! No okay the lackadaisical attitude most of the characters have to multiple murders is kind of weird, but I do understand valuing good theatre above all else so can you really blame them. (Ok no it is kind of weird.)
Though comparisons to a master like DHP are unavoidable and no good for anyone, Manford is very capable and fun and his Cioffi is an amiable goof who can’t help but comment on the show – and actually help improve it – instead of focusing on his investigation. His departures from his intended role and inability to control his enthusiasm for musical theatre is a MOOD, as the yoots say, and I love it, obviously. As writer-turned-unwitting-star of the show-within-a-show (called Robbin’ Hood of the Old West…it seems…terrible), Georgia is played by Carley Stenson, best known by most of the UK from the classic TV show Hollyoaks but a veritable West End star on her own merit. Her voice is wonderful, and her performance in general, although I could deal without all the Robbin’ Hood choreo trying to make her overly sexy. Other performers who stood out included Emma Caffrey as Bambi, the allegedly ditzy dancer, and the too hilarious Samuel Holmes as the bitchy director.
This show could benefit from about 20 minutes of fat trimmed off; it would make it a much snappier show that vibes better with its intended tone. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was at most 2 ½ hours on Broadway, but the moments of too-slow pacing in London have extended it to almost 3 hours! That’s nuts! And it’s too bad that the score highlights the show-within-a-show numbers more than the ones that tell the story, like the repeated “In the Same Boat” bits and the entire Robbin’ Hood saloon/brothel-y number “Thataway!”, which felt like it was 15 minutes. Even with the important events at the end of that number, it should be at least half as short. Same with the Singin’ in the Rain style “A Tough Act to Follow”, it felt way too long (but maybe because the love story between Cioffi and Niki, one of the actresses, is too hard to buy). But there are some great songs that are performed very well, like the best of the score “Show People”.
So even with some slow moments, and too much focus on Robbin’ Hood, and despite how godawful I’m sure Robbin’ Hood is, Curtains is a fun and funny whodunit that succeeds despite some flaws. What struck me most is how perfect this show is for high school and college, since there are SO MANY great parts, all of which get a chance to really show off. And there’s so much humor and good will that it’s always pretty enjoyable.
INFORMATION
Curtains ends its run at the Wyndham’s Theatre on January 11. This audience was shockingly well behaved!!
The Wyndham’s toilets situation is a travesty: if you are seated in the stalls, the ladies bathroom is house right/stage left and only has TWO STALLS. If you sit in Row E or F, as I did, you will be the first there, but otherwise you have to go upstairs to the lobby to have a chance. TWO STALLS.
