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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London’s Production of “The Birthday Party” Could Actually Make Someone a Fan of Pinter
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘The Birthday Party’, Harold Pinter’s play currently playing at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre (I know) until April 14.
I’ve said in the past that I am not a huge fan of Harold Pinter plays, but I keep seeing them because Elaine Stritch tells me to. I just don’t understand them. They never make any sense and I always leave the theatre going, ‘…what?’ And it’s not just me being stupid; apparently, that’s his thing. Pinter got his jollies by giving audiences vague hints at plot and truth and then letting them decide what’s what. Which I guess is a valid thing for you to do if you have a purpose, but I never know what that purpose is. It’s not like I’m having deep epiphany-like thoughts when trying to figure out wtf was happening. But, anyway, it turns out that FINALLY, you can enjoy a Pinter play even though you don’t know what’s going on, as I learned from London’s new production of “The Birthday Party”. There’s a lot of crazy going on and there’s no real sense of what’s true or even who is real, but it’s a really enjoyable, provocative time.
I’m not saying I like Pinter now or anything, merely that his work doesn’t have to be synonymous with agony. And maybe I was just won over by how cute it is for a Pinter play to be showing at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s so cute. If the situation were a doggo I’d pat its head. I wondered for a minute if from now on they could only produce Pinter plays in that house because otherwise it would feel like backpedaling but I just looked it up and the next thing coming in after ‘The Birthday Party’ leaves is ‘Cirque Berserk!’ so, no. Anyway, TBP was the first Pinter show I didn’t need a drink after (I don’t drink but you get what I mean) (well I did require ice cream and so we got soft serve and I liked it and I loved it) and it’s for a few reasons: 1. The direction by Ian Rickson felt well considered and correct for conveying the bits of the story. The cast was phenomenal, but the casts have been great in all the Pinter plays I’ve seen, so I think it comes down to the direction here. 2. This play is actually interesting. Unlike past shows, I didn’t despise all the characters and I actually cared about some. The only Pinter play I’ve seen twice (Broadway and West End) was ‘No Man’s Land’ and I wanted all of those characters to die, or at least suffer torture, maybe like having to watch their play. But here, I cared about poor wobbly-brained Meg and her nice, benign husband, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to poor sad-sack Stanley. Well at least at first. If he’s real. Let’s get down to it.
TBP (not The Bad Place (well maybe The Bad Place)) tells the story of Meg and Petey, an old couple living in a quiet English seaside town, running a boarding house. Petey works by the shore, setting up deck chairs for the tourists and Meg makes him bowls of cornflakes and inquires incessantly as to whether they’re ‘nice’, as that’s how British English describes food and I think no matter how long I live here I will never stand for it. As a long-married couple, they seem boring but inoffensive, and Meg’s unremitting questions about the weather and whether it’s ‘nice’ like the cornflakes and whether the fried bread she made Petey is ‘nice’ are annoying but in a ‘oh you old biddy’ type way and not in a rage-inducing way. They’re harmless, bland, so they seem at first. Petey is played by Peter Wright, and I just love when actors play characters with the same name. It makes me laugh to imagine costars saying ‘Oh hey Pete – oops, I mean Pete’ it’s nonsense don’t worry about it. Meg is played by the great Zoe Wanamaker and she is all kinds of unstable genius. Her state of mind, at first easily brushed aside as that of an old biddy, is really the centerpiece of the play, and the question of whether she’s a trustworthy commentator on her surroundings and the people around her shockingly morphs into whether everything we saw was just in her head. And Zoe conveys that with restraint and precision.
The boarding house has one lodger, a man named Stanley who is as peculiar as he is disheveled. Played by the outstanding Toby Jones, Stanley raises more questions than he or anyone in any Pinter play will ever answer. He’s been staying at Meg & Petey’s house for a year now, after working as a concert pianist all over the world…or maybe just all over England…or maybe he just played once. Meg treats him like a son, forcing him to wake up before too late, making him all his food, &c. At first I thought it was her son, and so you wonder about their relationship and then you wonder about Meg’s ‘offhand’ comment about how she always wanted a son. Does that explain why she treats him like this? or does that hint that he’s a figment of her imagination? Every little comment in this play is there for a reason. We will never be able to say for sure what they all add up to, but they definitely suggest that you can’t trust anything people say.
Everything changes when two men in business suits arrive, two mysterious men whose work and purpose for being in town are unknown and yet sinister. There’s the clear boss of the operation, Goldberg, played by Stephen Mangan who is usually hilarious but is here is terrifying. And sometimes hilarious but mostly terrifying. He’s Jewish and they mention that a lot. His colleague is an Irish man named McCann (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who is an unfrocked priest (from the village of Kamenka?), maybe, and seems nice but can be equally frightening when he gets riled up, which seems right for a priest. The two men take up a room at the house – which Petey is surprised that Meg has available for guests, which is surprising to us because we’re like aren’t you a boarding house? Stanley asks the men why on earth they would choose to stay here. Well, it’s a boarding house, right? Meg says repeatedly that it’s ‘on the list’ for seaside accommodations. Stanley scoffs and says that it isn’t a boarding house, but no one really makes anything of that.
The first act flies by and is really flawless. Well, it’s only 45 minutes so it better fly by, but still every bit felt necessary and enjoyable. The second act is a lot longer, an hour and a half maybe, and it’s a lot darker. Meg decides to throw Stanley a birthday party now that they have the men to be guests, along with neighbor Lulu (Pearl Mackie). Stanley resists and quite often tells Meg and the others that it’s not his birthday, that it’s actually next month, but no one seems to hear him or if they do they don’t mind. Meanwhile, Goldberg and McCann’s business is ever more clouded and yet more menacing, and they seem to know Stanley. And sometimes Stanley seems to know them. They have similar memories from their pasts and yet they deny them. Goldberg and McCann’s first names change at every mention. And while you first consider Stanley to be the unwitting victim in whatever game the men are playing, he morphs at times into the predator, albeit in an unknown fight. Everything feels up in the air and uncertain and nothing will stick as truth.
The actual birthday party is even stranger, with Meg too drunk to notice that the two men are psychologically torturing Stanley, who at one point freaks out and then tries to strangle Meg. It’s unclear who turns the lights out or why, but when they come back on it 100% looks like Stanley has killed Lulu. It’s undeniable and so I think it’s purposeful, for you to be so convinced of something only to find out later that that’s false, to further the entire theme of this play. (Pearl herself said at stagedoor that everyone always says to her ‘I thought you were dead!’ so we are clearly supposed to think that.) Every few minutes you think you figured out what’s happening, who’s good, who’s bad, but then that would all get turned on its head and you’d be back to square one.
It’s the kind of drama that makes you hold your breath a lot of the time, because there’s no predicting what is going to happen next and how bad it’s going to get for someone. And because so much is unknown and unclear, it’s overall very chilling. We don’t know what’s happening, the characters don’t know who each other are or what they want, and everything can very quickly turn even darker. While there’s a good deal of humor, that often makes everything scarier. Nothing like watching the terrifying Stephen Mangan laugh at something and then instantaneously become more threatening than before. Although my favorite part of the show is a very non-threatening joke, when McCann tells his boss, “You’ve always been a true Christian”, and Goldberg replies “…in a way.” But the best moment of perfect directing and acting and menace all around comes when Stanley erupts at Goldberg and yells at him for being a ‘dirty joke’, but Toby Jones holds the ‘j’ on joke in a way where it’s clear Stanley was about to say ‘dirty Jew’. It’s brilliantly done.
In the last scene, things sort of fell apart for me, simply because we don’t know what’s happening or why or where the men are taking Stanley. And all the unknown elements started to annoy me instead of inspire me to think more creatively or whatever Pinter wants us to do. It just got to be a bit much. But Zoe as Meg brings it home, as she reminisces about the party the night before, the utter shitshow of a party that led to attempted murders and other illegal activity, including the abduction of Stanley to who knows where. But she doesn’t know or care, she just knows she was the belle of the ball. And it’s framed exactly the same as the opening scene, just her talking to her placating husband, and you wonder if any of the intervening scenes actually happened or if reality, whatever that is, has been just this the whole time, just the two of them living their humdrum lives, talking over cornflakes with no one else around.
If I were watching this at home I would have been screaming the entire time. What are you doing! Who are you! Why wouldn’t you comment on what JUST HAPPENED? But as a whole, the play is really remarkably well done, and the acting is stellar. There are a few moments where you question why on earth an actor chose to deliver a line that way, not the way you would have expected it (often with Mangan’s character), but it makes a certain odd sense that everything even down to the delivery would be uncomfortable and often off-putting. A part of me wants to shake the ghost of Pinter and be like what the ffffffff happened but you know what, I think I’m okay just wondering about it. Or maybe I’ve reached that point in my Pinter experiences where I just don’t care anymore.
INFORMATION
This production is playing at the Harold Pinter theatre until April 14. The theatre is a mess and is the one most in need of a refurbishment. The lobby and entrance area is so small that not many people can actually fit there, which is for sure a fire hazard. If you are sitting in the stalls, sit in the area at stage right (house left) because that’s closer to the good toilets (they are like right there if you are in rows E-H, which we were yayyyyy) and the exit.
AUDIENCE
No phones, thank god, but somehow a LOT of talkers who didn’t understand that they shouldn’t be talking to their companions the entire time and like, NOT in a whisper??? Wtf is wrong with people.
STAGE DOOR
Everyone but Zoe came out and signed and took pictures! They were very nice. Actually Zoe may have come out but I bounced after a little because I needed the aforementioned ice cream. It’s not a bad walk to the vegan ice cream shoppe Yorica! so I strongly recommend going there afterwards. I love their soft serve. I love all soft serve but theirs is particularly good because it has that bland lightness I enjoy. What were we talking about? Oh theatre. Go see theatre.
Academy Award Predictions: Happy Oscars Everybody!
My dog Oscar chewing on an Oscar
It’s the most wonderful tiiiime of the year!!! Yes here we are again, the Academy Awards, the greatest achievement in popularity in all of entertainment, the source of agita to end all agita. What do you think will happen come Sunday night? Will “12 Years a Slave” win the big one? Will idiots who want to seem in the know award “American Hustle” the best original screenplay award for absolutely no discernible reason? Will Lupita Nyong’o cap off her incredible red carpet season with the best gown of the night, or will Cate Blanchett continue her reign as queen of everything? Here’s what I think will happen, what I want to happen, and what better not happen. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
BEST ACTOR
BEST ACTRESS
“Do you think I give two shits? I’m the coolest person there is regardless of silly awards.” 
“I am perfection.” BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
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BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
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As I said in my review of all the movies in contention, “12 Years A Slave” is the most deserving film. “Gravity” is coming in at a close second according to predictors like Nate Silver and his friends, but it wouldn’t be as deserving. The real shame here is that absence of “Saving Mr. Banks”, which was one of the best of the year, and definitely better than 7 of the 9 nominees.
Although “Gravity” is not the best picture of the year, Cuaron’s direction is a big achievement in a new phase of special effects technology. He should win this one, so long as “12 Years” wins the big one.
There were so so many great male performances this year, so someone worthy had to be snubbed. However, one of the major snubbees, like Redford, whom people said was going to win at one point for chrissakes, should have been nominated over Bale, who is always great but nothing special in “Hustle”. McConaughey surprised many by sweeping all the major awards leading up to this weekend, but so many people want to reward him for his comeback, so that’s understandable. It just sucks that his parade runs over what should have been Chiwetel’s celebration. Not that Matthew wasn’t fantastic or hell maybe even the best of the year. It just shouldn’t have been such a landslide.
While this list of leading ladies is extremely impressive (Amy Adams’s great performance is the one thing I’m willing to commend “Hustle” on, that and hairdos), Emma Thompson’s snub is atrocious. Many thought her performance was one for the ages and a strong contender for the winner, yet she’s not on this list. It could be because the category is so strong, but the overall snubbery of “Banks” is so awful that it all seems connected. Like voters got sick of people saying during recent years how the most awarded films, like “The Artist” and “Argo”, were about the industry and how the industry just likes to reward itself and pat itself on the back, so this year voters were like, “Hey, let’s not let those critics say that this year; let’s not reward this movie about the industry even though it’s one of the best of the year.” And so Emma Thompson was a casualty of that, which blows. But it doesn’t really matter, because as I said in my recap, Blanchett’s performance is SICKMAZING.
Jared Leto has so many things in his favor going into Sunday night: He’s been away from acting for freaking years, focusing on his music instead, and his first shot out of the gate is this incredible performance in a heavily lauded movie. He’s also playing a tragic, kindhearted transgender woman named Rayon, a part up there with Holocaust roles for the most likely to win Oscars. He was incredible, too, so it’s all good.
Lupita was incredible in her first major film role, and really better win. If Jennifer Lawrence wins another award this year just because people want to be her friend and want her to think they’re cool for thinking she’s cool, I’ma be real mad. Last year was her year! Not this year! Argh! Lupita! I love you!
I hope “12 Years” will take this one, but I’d be thrilled with an upset by “Before Midnight”, which had a sensational, genius script, or “Philomena”, because I’d love a Steve Coogan acceptance speech.
I loved loved “Her”, and if it’s going to win any award, best original screenplay is the one, because damn if it wasn’t the best original screenplay in years. You know what shouldn’t win? “Hustle”, which had great performances but damn if it wasn’t the most disappointing script in years.
Best movie everrrr!
HERE I STAAAAND AND HERE I’LL STAYYYY! |
Other things that should happen:
- “Gravity” should win all the visual and technical awards
- Idina Menzel should get a standing ovation
- Kerry Washington, presenter and fixer, should say something about everything being handled
- “Blackfish” should win Best Documentary on a write-in vote because it was inexplicably snubbed
- John Williams should win best score, for “The Book Thief”, for the first time in more than 20 years
- Some really drunk winner should say how the Oscars don’t really mean anything
- Host Ellen DeGeneres will make everyone laugh at good-natured, well-meaning, completely nonthreatening and non-harmful jokes
HAPPY OSCARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
